Deliberate Discretion?
The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy

This book explains the different approaches legislators use when they write laws.

John D. Huber (Author), Charles R. Shipan (Author)

9780521817448, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 October 2002

304 pages, 18 b/w illus. 18 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.62 kg

'… remarkable … This book asks a very crucial, yet little examined question …'. Journal of Public Policy

The laws that legislatures adopt provide the most important and definitive opportunity elected politicians have to define public policy. But the ways politicians use laws to shape policy varies considerably across polities. In some cases, legislatures adopt detailed and specific laws in efforts to micromanage policy-making processes. In others, they adopt general and vague laws that leave the executive and bureaucrats substantial autonomy to fill in the policy details. What explains these differences across political systems, and how do they matter? The authors address this issue by developing and testing a comparative theory of how laws shape bureaucratic autonomy. Drawing on a range of evidence from advanced parliamentary democracies and the American states, they argue that particular institutional forms have a systematic and predictable effect on how politicians use laws to shape the policy making process.

1. Laws, bureaucratic autonomy and the comparative study of delegation
2. Rational delegation or helpless abdication? The relationship between bureaucrats and politicians
3. Statutes as blueprints for policy making processes
4. A comparative theory of legislative discretion and the policy making process
5. Legislation, agency policy making and Medicaid in Michigan
6. The design of laws across separation of powers systems
7. The design of laws across parliamentary systems
8. Laws, institutions, and policy making processes.

Subject Areas: Educational: Citizenship & social education [YQN], Political economy [KCP]