With Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig Murphy have contributed an important volume analyzing the history of standardization generally, and with tailored historical insights for individual standard-setting bodies, consortia, and entrepreneurs. The compilation, identification, and preservation of new primary materials will no doubt be of enormous aid to future scholars. They are to be congratulated […]
I’m delighted to announce that over the next week and a half, we’re hosting an online symposium on JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy‘s fascinating new book, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880. Yates is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Work and Organization Studies and Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of […]
Rachel Potter’s new book Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy is an absolute must-read for those interested in agency rulemaking and in administrative law and regulatory practice more generally. As the title suggests, the book explores empirically and theoretically how agency officials — both career civil servants and political appointees — leverage procedural […]
In Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, Rachel Potter examines agency strategies for coping with presidential, congressional, and judicial review of their proposed rules. Scholars have long thought that agencies substantively moderate their rules to anticipate concerns likely to be raised in the course of the political process and subsequent litigation. Prof. Potter […]
It is both humbling and daunting to have your book reviewed by so many eminent scholars. I am deeply grateful to Chris Walker and the JREG crew for hosting this symposium, and especially to Bridget Dooling for organizing it. When I first began writing Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, my hope was […]
The question of how political actors can overcome the principal-agent problem and “control” bureaucratic decisions has long fascinated political scientists. In 1987, Matthew McCubbins, Roger Noll, and Barry Weingast (often referred to as “McNollgast”) put forth an argument regarding the use of procedures by legislatures to constrain bureaucratic behavior. They maintained that by requiring agencies […]
Rachel Potter’s new book, Bending the Rules, offers an intriguing new look into how agencies strategically use procedural discretion in rulemaking to achieve a desired outcome in the face of opposition. The tools agencies have to engage in this “procedural politicking” (as Potter calls it) arise within the “white space” that is created by the […]
The administrative state exercises power — too much power in the view of many. But what kind of power and in what forms? Rachel Potter’s new book, Bending the Rules, provides an occasion to reflect on these questions. The portrait she presents is that of strategic bureaucrats. These bureaucrats, civil servants and appointees alike, know […]
Regulatory scholars have traditionally viewed the three primary actors in the regulatory process – political overseers, regulatory agencies, and regulated entities – as operating in a set of nested principal-agent relationships. In the first, the overseer, which might be Congress, the president, or the courts, functions as the principal, and the regulator is the agent. […]
“Procedures are politics.” P. 201. Rachel Potter’s book, Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, examines agencies’ choices in structuring their rulemaking processes. One might assume that each agency follows a consistent procedure across all its rulemakings, but Prof. Potter suggests otherwise. For instance, comment periods often vary greatly, p. 119, as do choices […]
This week, we’re hosting a web symposium on Dr. Rachel A. Potter’s new book, Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy (University of Chicago Press). Dr. Potter is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Prior to her academic career, she worked for the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in […]
We are delighted to contribute to this symposium. Adriana Roberton’s article, Passive in Name Only, sheds important light on an overlooked but important part of the investment ecosystem, index providers. Our article, Corporate Governance by Index Exclusion, recently published in the Boston University Law Review, expands on the core message of Robertson’s article, that indexes […]
The recent popularity of index investing and corresponding influx of assets into passively managed mutual funds has generated a large literature in law and in finance about the implications for securities markets, antitrust, corporate governance, and beyond. But few have explored the index landscape itself. Professor Robertson’s article is an important exception, and her findings—in […]
Over the last few weeks, Notice and Comment has hosted a symposium with contributions from fourteen scholars on the binding power of federal agency guidance, using as a focal point my article “Federal Agency Guidance and the Power to Bind,” recently published in the Yale Journal on Regulation. The contributions, many of which draw from […]
I have learned a lot from the articles in which Nick Parrillo summarized and built on the valuable empirical study of guidance documents that he conducted for ACUS and from the many comments on Nick’s work that scholars have published in the Notice and Comment symposium on Nick’s work. I hope to add to that […]