Regulation and Public Interests: The Possibility of Good Regulatory Government

This book argues that public choice accounts of regulation rest on an incomplete understanding of regulatory government. In particular, such accounts show too little attention to the actual processes through which administrative agencies regulate. Missing from the picture is administrative law, broadly understood to include both the legal decision-making processes through which regulatory entities regulate, and the broader legal environment in which they do so. But once regulatory institutions are considered in the light of their legal-procedural and environmental complexity, conclusions about the inability of regulatory government to advance the general welfare give way to more optimistic, though qualified, assessments. Administrative agencies can, and have, employed their semi-autonomous decision-making techniques to promote general interests. Good regulatory government is no more impossible than it is inevitable.