Magill, M. Elizabeth; Ortiz, Daniel R. --- "Comparative Positive Political Theory" [2010] ELECD 811; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter (eds), "Comparative Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Comparative Administrative Law

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446359

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Comparative Positive Political Theory

Author(s): Magill, M. Elizabeth; Ortiz, Daniel R.

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

9 Comparative positive political theory
M. Elizabeth Magill and Daniel R. Ortiz


Little in the last thirty years has so changed thinking about American administrative
law as Positive Political Theory (PPT). Before PPT emerged, American administrative
law scholarship largely focused on how doctrine fit together, how we should reform it to
promote particular normative aims, how it expressed the commitments of larger political
theory, and how it furthered or frustrated effective administration. At its apotheosis in
Richard Stewart's `The Reformation of American Law' (1975), it did all these things ­
and more ­ in aid of tracing American administrative law's development.
Soon, however, political scientists encroached on the field. They brought a set of tools
to the study of administration that they had designed to analyze how political institu-
tions function. The PPTers, in particular, `focused on how political institutions and the
career objectives of elected officials shape political decisions' (McNollgast 1999: 182).
They sought to explain, among other things, why Congress imposed particular proce-
dures on agency decisionmaking, how formalizing decisionmaking empowered various
groups, and how agencies and courts could play their own interests off against the
interests of the political masters they were supposed to serve. Their insights complicated
`faithful agent' models of administration and highlighted how agencies and courts could
and, to some degree, did follow their own interests. Their arguments swept broadly and
offered provocative, often cynical, interpretations of administrative rulemaking, judicial
review, and effective separation of powers. PPT not only challenged much conventional
thinking but ...