Making Policy Public
Participatory Bureaucracy in American Democracy

This book challenges the convention that government bureaucrats seek secrecy and demonstrates how participatory bureaucracy manages the tension between bureaucratic administration and democratic accountability.

Susan L. Moffitt (Author)

9781107065222, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 September 2014

264 pages, 8 b/w illus. 20 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

'Making Policy Public is a major contribution to the study of bureaucratic politics. Moffitt demonstrates the important and previously overlooked role of agency advisory committees for both gaining information and communicating to the public. This research will cause scholars to reassess the contribution of advisory committees and take notice of their positive contributions to democracy. This book is must-reading for scholars of public administration and political science.' Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that government bureaucrats inevitably seek secrecy and demonstrates how and when participatory bureaucracy manages the enduring tension between bureaucratic administration and democratic accountability. Looking closely at federal level public participation in pharmaceutical regulation and educational assessments within the context of the vast system of American federal advisory committees, this book demonstrates that participatory bureaucracy supports bureaucratic administration in ways consistent with democratic accountability when it focuses on complex tasks and engages diverse expertise. In these conditions, public participation can help produce better policy outcomes, such as safer prescription drugs. Instead of bureaucracy's opposite or alternative, public participation can work as its complement.

1. Portals of democracy in American bureaucracy
2. Participatory bureaucracy in practice: implementing complex policy
3. The private and bureaucratic roots of public participation: the development of American federal public committees
4. Making educational performance public: reporting on the progress of education
5. Private knowledge for public problems: regulating pharmaceutical information
6. Setting the public agenda
7. Deliberate participation
8. The impact of public advice on bureaucratic administration
9. Participatory bureaucracy in American democracy.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Politics & government [JP]