Regulatory Negotiation as Citizen Participation: A Critique

Techniques for facilitating citizen participation vary in utility and effectiveness in different nations and cultures. When the essential processes of democracy differ, naturally the means for participating will also differ. Regulatory negotiation, a means for drafting regulations required under law through consensus building among parties that are otherwise likely to disagree, is and will probably remain unique to the United States, because it is directly related to important characteristics of democracy in that nation: implementation of legislative policies characterized by adversarial relationships with government and among affected interests, the ability to challenge regulatory decisions of government agencies in court, and — both a consequence and a cause of the first two — the existence of powerful, well-organized national-level interest groups that are expected to act on behalf of their members without direct consultation.