Democratic Rulemaking

New paper by de Figueiredo, John M. and Stiglitz, Edward for the Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics, Forthcoming: “To what extent is agency rulemaking democratic? This paper examines the soundness and empirical support for the leading theories that purport to endow the administrative state with democratic legitimacy. We study the theories in light of two normative benchmarks: a “democratic” benchmark based on voter preferences, and a “republican” benchmark based on the preferences of elected representatives. We conclude that all of the proposed theories lack empirical support and many have substantial conceptual flaws; we point to directions for possible future research….(More)”