Procedural Control of the Bureaucracy, Peer Review, and Epistemic Drift

Posted: 9 Jul 2008

See all articles by Stuart Shapiro

Stuart Shapiro

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy

David Guston

Arizona State University (ASU) - Department of Political Science

Date Written: October 2007

Abstract

Regulatory peer review-in which independent scientists comment on the technical underpinnings of proposed regulations-is a recently pursued form of political control of the bureaucracy. This article situates regulatory peer review in the context of both the history of technical advice to government and the principal-agent perspective often used to explain the presence of administrative procedures. Much of the academic discussion of attempts to influence bureaucratic decision making has utilized principal-agent theory. We introduce two novel concepts to accommodate regulatory peer review into the principal-agent framework. The first is technocracy where the preferences of technical experts displace public preferences. The second is epistemic drift, a change in embodied knowledge that contributes to departures from the policy intentions of an enacting coalition of policy makers. In addition to introducing these concepts, we argue that regulatory peer review is more complex than other administrative procedures and that its efficacy critically depends on the details of its implementation. We hypothesize that regulatory peer review will cause nongovernmental participants in regulatory conflicts to devote more effort to creating research and other epistemic resources. But we also hypothesize that, just as courts have become more politicized with their role in regulatory policy, peer review and regulatory science will become increasingly politicized as well.

Suggested Citation

Shapiro, Stuart and Guston, David, Procedural Control of the Bureaucracy, Peer Review, and Epistemic Drift (October 2007). Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 17, Issue 4, pp. 535-551, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1157240 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mul026

Stuart Shapiro (Contact Author)

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy ( email )

New Brunswick, NJ 08901
United States

David Guston

Arizona State University (ASU) - Department of Political Science ( email )

Tempe, AZ
United States

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