The Logic of Presidential Delegation: A Comparative Analysis of Administrative Procedural Reform in Korea and Taiwan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeeyang Rhee Baum

University of California, Los Angeles

Department of Political Science

Box 951472

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472

E-mail: jbaum@ucla.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please do not cite without author's permission

 

 

 

 

Prepared for delivery at the First International Graduate Student Retreat for Comparative Research, Society for Comparative Research/Center for Comparative Social Analysis, UCLA, May 8-9, 1999.

 

1. Introduction

One important aspect of the development of democracy is the introduction of administrative reform. By reform, I mean structures and procedures that executive agencies must follow that open up the administrative decision-making process to public scrutiny and participation. However, such reform limits the power of the very politicians responsible for its implementation, by restricting their own ability to act arbitrarily. So why would politicians in general -- and presidents in particular -- ever initiate administrative reform? The answer lies in the logic of delegation (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991). Given the complexities of government in the late 20th Century, democratic or otherwise, delegation is inevitable, for purposes of division of labor and access to specialized expertise. But there are risks in delegating, because the delegator cannot perpetually or perfectly monitor the activities of its agents. When elected politicians delegate policy-making authority to unelected bureaucrats, the possibility of bureaucrats not complying with the politicians’ (i.e., principals’) policy preferences, arises. The literature on delegation refers to this possibility as agency slippage (McCubbins, Noll and Weingast 1987, 1989).

One of the hallmarks of democracy is that the power of office holders is limited. So principals cannot simply run roughshod over agents, threatening them with death or banishment for noncompliance (as might be possible in an autocracy).{fn1: Interestingly it appears to be the case autocrats sometimes tie their own hands by introducing reforms that limit their own powers, precisely because coercion is of limited value as a control mechanism (North and Weingast 1989).} Still, principals have several tools other than the threat or use of force that they can use to control delegation by minimizing agency slippage. Legislators, for example, can design contracts that lay out explicitly what is expected from each actor in a principal-agent relationship (Alchian and Demsetz 1972; Williamson 1975) along with performance-based punishments and rewards. Second, principals can try to choose agents whose policy preferences match their own (Weingast and Moran 1983, 769). A third tool involves delegating to multiple agents with divergent goals, in order to constrain decision-making by any one agent (e.g., establishing overlapping jurisdictions, restrictive procedures, etc.). Finally, monitoring and oversight (designed to uncover hidden information and action) – police patrols (e.g., oversight hearings) and fire alarms (e.g., administrative procedure) – can reduce information asymmetries so that legislators can track bureaucrats' activities. However, some tools are more costly than others (in that their use reduces the net benefits of delegating) and the literature assumes principals will use the lightest touch necessary to do the job.

The literature on delegation in democracies is voluminous, but has concentrated primarily on delegation from legislatures to executives, and almost exclusively on the single case of the United States. {fn2: Exceptions include Ramseyer and Rosenbluth (1993), Moe and Caldwell (1994) Horn (1995), Huber (1998) and Huber and Lupia (1998).} Among the most notable insights from this literature include how legislative strategies such as monitoring (Banks 1989), fire alarm oversight (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984; Lupia and McCubbins 1998) and sanctions (Weingast and Moran 1983) induce bureaucrats to serve legislators’ interests. Other scholars have shown how information asymmetries between legislators and agencies affect the optimal amount of delegation (Calvert, McCubbins, and Weingast 1989; Epstein and O’Halloran 1994, 1998; Bawn 1995, 1997). While inter-branch delegation is particularly problematic in a system of separated powers -- because each branch enjoys constitutionally protected powers denied to the other -- it is a shortcoming of existing studies that they assume away intra-branch delegation problems. Congress is seen as having to find ways to control the executive branch writ large, but less attention is paid to the ability of the head of the executive branch, the president, to control the agencies and bureaus nominally under her authority. {fn3: In a larger project, I intend to extend my argument to parliamentary democracies.}

Recent institutionalist scholars have found that there is a wide range of powers among presidential governments (Shugart and Carey 1992). The power of the president varies in two significant ways: First, a president's constitutionally-derived powers can vary (e.g., appointment and dismissal powers). Second, the size and cohesiveness of a president's political support coalition can vary. These variations in presidential power have direct implications for presidents’ ability to "control" the executive branch. My paper investigates these important constitutional and coalitional differences to explain why presidents support administrative procedures in some countries (at some times) and not in others.

My theory seeks to explain the conditions under which presidents prefer the establishment of restrictive administrative procedures. I argue that the greater the intra-executive branch conflict (i.e., divergent preferences), the greater the potential for agency slippage. The best solution might be to appoint experts who have the same preferences as the president. But, if a president must compromise on appointments, or is restricted by her party from implementing her preferred policies, the likelihood of agency slippage is higher. Therefore, a "second-best" solution is an administrative procedure act (APA).

Specifically, when two principals with divergent preferences both seek to control an agent, but must cooperate to do so, they are at a potential impasse. In a presidential system, the legislature always needs the president’s agreement and so tends to prefer detailed administrative procedures. Presidents, on the other hand, only prefer administrative procedures if they cannot rule the executive branch with impunity. They will veto APA's if they are free to appoint their allies and use executive orders/decrees to manipulate the bureaucracy. {fn4: Most of the legal instruments issued by Latin American and Asian presidents are of an administrative or regulatory nature and do not seek to change the legislative status quo. These are acts inherent to the executive in any country and would simply be called "Executive Orders" in the U.S. However, in some presidential systems, the president may actually implement new law by decree; there are legal instruments that consist of a presidential proclamation that does not need prior legislative consent, yet may supercede existing legislation. (In Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, the president’s decree power extend to practically any policy area, although there are explicit constitutional restrictions by policy area in each country.) (Shugart and Haggard 1998).} In the U.S., for example, Franklin Roosevelt vetoed the 1940 Walter-Logan bill, the failed predecessor to the 1946 APA. If the coalition between the Republicans and Southern Democrats had only a few more votes to override Roosevelt's veto in the House, the bill would have controlled the New Deal agencies through strict judicial review, while exempting most agencies established prior to the New Deal (Shepherd 1996). However, if presidents have limited appointment powers, they will support an APA in order to mitigate the risks of agency slippage. In short, procedures are a second-best solution to reducing information asymmetries so that, when necessary, principals can keep track of bureaucrats' activities.

A president’s interest in administrative procedures might vary over issue area and over time, as the strength and organization of her support coalition varies. If she is on solid ground on one set of issues, unopposed from within her support coalition, she will most likely eschew formal procedures. However, if she confronts significant opposition on another set of issues, she may support procedures in those latter issue areas.

This paper has five subsequent sections. In the next section, I review the pertinent literature on administrative reform and presidential democracies. In the third section, I present a theory of administrative procedural reform as a tool for political control within the executive branch of government. In the fourth section, I discuss the operationalization of variables. The fifth section provides preliminary evidence by examining two cases of recently democratized presidential systems – South Korea (hereafter Korea) and Taiwan -- to determine whether the logic of delegation applies beyond the U.S. case and within the executive branch of government. The final section concludes.

2. Previous Studies

2.1. Problems of Delegation and Control Mechanisms

In modern democracies, the delegation of day-to-day policy implementation to an appointed bureaucracy -- for division of labor and to take advantage of expertise -- is a significant problem which raises two specific questions: First, how can elected politicians retain policy control if they do not implement the laws themselves? What prevents bureaucrats from implementing their own policy preferences, rather than those embodied in the laws? Second, on what basis does policy outcomes represent democratic legitimacy and serve the public interest if it is implemented by unelected bureaucrats (McNollgast 1997, n.d.)?

If delegation leads to serious agency problems (Alchian and Demsetz 1972; Fama 1980; Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991) a critical aspect of an effective representative democracy is that elected officials must be able to control policy outcomes. One would expect that voters hold elected politicians accountable for policy outcomes. If this is the case, it is reasonable to expect those politicians to have an electoral incentive to design institutional processes that constrain bureaucrats’ decision making such that they are responsive to their policy preferences.

McCubbins and Page (1987) have argued that in the face of either uncertainty or conflict regarding an agency’s establishment legislation, Congress will react by granting the agency more policy instruments and a broader scope of authority, but more restrictive procedures. If the problem is uncertainty, then a broad scope and a wide range of instruments increases the likelihood that the agency will be able to respond to unforeseen developments. However, restrictive procedures will insure that the agency remains substantively responsive to congressional will. The same logic pertains to situations of greater conflict, when, in order to maintain a coalition to enact the legislation, it is necessary to insure that the agency is capable of addressing the priorities of the various factions in the coalition. At the same time, restrictive procedures allow Congress to prevent the agency from deviating far from congressional preferences. McNollgast (1987) suggest a mechanism for bureaucratic control by the legislature – the strategic use of administrative procedural mandates to "stack the deck" such that the legislative intent of the enacting coalition is preserved. Such procedures as subsidized participation of favored interest groups, adjusting the burden of proof and enfranchising new interests are means by which the procedural deck may be stacked in favor of the interests of the enacting coalition. McNollgast (1989) have added that the careful development of administrative procedures can insure that the "right" interests/constituents get represented without necessarily knowing in advance what the appropriate substantive outcomes will be. Several studies (McCubbins 1985; McNollgast 1987; Lupia and McCubbins 1997) cite as evidence Food and Drug Administration (FDA) procedures surrounding the development of new drugs and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) procedures regarding the introduction of new chemicals. In the former case, the burden of proof regarding safety is placed squarely on the manufacturer; in the latter case, the burden of proof is placed on the EPA to prove that a chemical is unsafe. The result of varying this administrative procedure (who must meet the burden of proof) is that few new drugs are brought to market, while few chemicals are prevented from being brought to market.

While these studies have provided valuable insights, the powers and interests of the president are, for the most part, neglected. One exception is a study by McNollgast (1989) which considers the potential use of administrative procedures to insure that the interests of the enacting coalition (interpreted as including the House, the Senate and the President) are pursued by the agency into the indefinite future. However, this analysis, like others, focuses solely on inter-branch delegation problems, while disregarding the potential for intra-branch delegation problems. Presidents are treated neither as independent actors with preferences about administrative procedures nor as players with important formal and informal powers to enforce their preferences (see Moe 1990, Moe and Caldwell 1994 for exceptions). In particular, previous studies cannot explain why presidents go along with the passage of administrative procedures. Epstein and O’Halloran’s (1998) model includes the president as an important player but only to the extent of his appointment powers, affecting the median legislator's calculus regarding the level of a new agency's discretion. Again, the question of control is addressed from a congressional perspective rather than from the perspective of the presidency.

2.2. Presidential Democracies

A significant contribution of the institutionalist literature is that there are variations in presidential powers across different separation-of-power constitutions (Shugart and Carey 1992). According to Shugart and Carey, a governmental system is "presidential" if it possesses the following characteristics: (1) popular election of the chief executive – almost always called the president; (2) terms of the chief executive and assembly are fixed, and are not contingent on mutual confidence; (3) the elected executive appoints and directs the composition of the government; and (4) the president has some constitutionally granted lawmaking authority (Shugart and Carey 1992, 19). Countries with presidential systems satisfy these four criteria through diverse means. First, most presidential systems preclude immediate reelection. Many countries (e.g., Colombia 1991, Costa Rica, Korea, Philippines and Mexico) prohibit reelection and in some countries, a president can be reelected after one (e.g., Colombia pre-1991, and Peru) or two (e.g., Venezuela) interim terms. {fn5: Note that in a few countries presidents are limited to two consecutive terms (U.S., Taiwan, and Argentina 1994) or are not limited at all (Paraguay; current constitution prohibits reelection)}.

Second, the president can have limited appointment and dismissal powers regarding her cabinet. While most presidential systems do not require legislative approval of appointees, several countries – Korea, Nigeria, Philippines, Taiwan, and the U.S. – give the assembly some influence on cabinet formation. Third, several aspects of the legislative powers of popularly elected presidents can vary, including the veto, the partial veto, presidential authority to legislate by decree, the exclusive right to initiate certain legislative proposals, budgetary initiative, and the power to propose referenda.

There is also a hybrid form of semi-presidentialism (Duverger 1980; Shugart and Carey 1992; Sartori 1997). These regimes have some problems {fn6: In a semi-presidential system the president is directly elected and holds substantial constitutional power. However, a government headed by the prime minister is responsible to the assembly. Since both the president and assembly can exercise influence on the premier and the cabinet, it is unclear who holds the ultimate administrative power.} (Lijphart 1984, 74) but reveal the broad range of differing constitutional presidential powers. The two types of semi-presidentialism include: (1) president-parliamentary systems in which there is shared (or confused) authority over cabinets between the president and the assembly; and (2) premier-presidentialism in which the president has certain significant powers, but the cabinet answers only to the assembly (Shugart and Carey 1992, 55).

Presidential power can also vary by the size and cohesiveness of a president’s political support/coalition base. Variation in a president’s support/executive coalition in the legislature affects her ability to control the executive branch. Shugart and Haggard (1998), for example, argue that policy making in presidential systems must consider both the separation of powers and the potential for separation of purpose:

"If the president can count on a fully disciplined partisan majority in the legislature, he can override the checks built into the system and presidentialism can function as the most majoritarian of (formally) democratic political systems: highly decisive, but with little representation for interests outside the ruling party or coalition and the potential for capricious changes of policy course. This would be a case of extreme unity of purpose, with the legislature possibly reduced to a virtual rubber stamp. Conversely, if parties are highly fragmented and poorly disciplined, or if the president's party is in a minority in an ideologically polarized legislature, separation of purpose increases and with it the potential for deadlock, instability and balkanization" (2).

Contrary to scholars who claim that presidentialism is not conducive to political cooperation and is therefore "perilous," Shugart and Haggard (1998) show that very few presidential cases actually fall under either of these extremes. For my purposes, their approach to policy making in presidential systems is useful for understanding the variation in cabinet control by the president.

In sum, by bringing the above literatures from American and Comparative politics together, my paper fills two gaps in the comparative literature: First, I examine and define a key aspect of democratic consolidation – administrative reforms – in recently democratized countries. Second, I take into account important institutional and coalitional differences in different separation-of-power systems in order to explain why presidents support administrative procedures in some countries and not in others.

3. Presidential Choices Regarding Administrative Procedures

In this section, I attempt to build a theory about how the level of conflict (i.e., divergent preferences) within the executive branch of government can influence the extent of administrative procedures preferred by the president. My goal is to determine how factionalization within parties, coalition government and limited appointment and dismissal powers affect a principal’s – i.e., a president’s – decision to support the use of administrative procedures to achieve her preferred policy outcomes.

The choice I seek to explain is a decision of the president rather than a game between the president and an agency. Thus, similar to previous decision-theoretic models (Bawn 1995), I focus on the sequence of decisions in the choice of administrative procedures by a president who wants to implement her preferred policy outcomes. The model assumes that the agency’s future strategic actions are anticipated by the president.

Consistent with formal models of delegation, I include two key assumptions: 1) bureaucrats are empowered to discover the best course of action and possess hidden information (i.e., informational advantages) that they may use strategically to lead the president to do what the bureaucrats want, regardless of the president’s preferences and 2) there exists the possibility of hidden action by bureaucrats, which may include "shirking" their duties. There are two kinds of shirking: 1) bureaucrats failing to do their jobs – including implementing the principal’s preferred policies, perhaps out of laziness or due to a lack of incentives; and 2) Politically motivated shirking which may involve efforts by bureaucrats to prevent the principals’ preferred policies from being enacted or actively seeking to enact policies contrary to the principals’ preferred policies.

The political science literature on bureaucratic accountability focuses on how factors such as the relationship between the interests of a principal and an agent -- which may give an agent a motive for acting contrary to its principal’s preferences -- and information asymmetries -- which might allow an agent to act against a principal without fear of retribution -- determine the consequences of delegation (Huber and Lupia 1998, 6). "For example, better information, lower monitoring costs, and higher sanctions each increase bureaucratic accountability by making the agent more likely to serve the principal’s interests" (5).

In addition, Bawn (1995) captures the trade-off between technical expertise and political control in a model of congressional choices about agency procedures. She shows that depending on exogenous levels of technical and political uncertainty, optimal agency procedures can maximize either technical competence or political control, or achieve some combination of the two (62). I employ this framework to explore the factors in presidential systems that might affect the levels of technical and political uncertainty that, in turn, determine the type and extent of administrative procedures preferred by the president.

The three relevant actors are the president, cabinet ministers (or senior level agency administrators appointed by the president), and career bureaucrats. I assume that presidents, cabinet ministers, and bureaucrats seek to maximize their relative policy preferences. As previously discussed, there are two paths toward divergence of preferences: First, for political reasons, the president might be forced to appoint cabinet ministers with preferences different from her own. Second, career bureaucrats might have their own institutional interests, distinct from the president or agency heads appointed by the president.

3.1. When Presidents Prefer Administrative Procedures

Transitions from authoritarian government to presidential democracies meant that presidents faced new electoral incentives. A key assumption is that politicians’ primary goal is re-election (Mayhew 1974; Fenno 1978). A variation of this assumption – offered, for example, in the event that a politician cannot run for re-election – might be that the politician has an alternative incentive to appeal to the maximum number of voters. For instance, a sitting president might be concerned with insuring the continuity of her preferred policies (by guaranteeing that her party retains power), or perhaps even with avoiding prosecution in the next administration for her misdeeds while in office. For these reasons, presidents may have interest in maintaining her party’s electoral appeal. As such, presidents have strong incentives to control agents with divergent preferences because uncooperative agents can lessen presidential control of administrative resources or impede their attempts to manage the bureaucracy. Consequently, presidents support such control mechanisms as administrative procedures that constrain agents’ capacity to make independent decisions.

Depending upon the policy jurisdiction, sometimes presidents may prefer not to delegate the policy choice to an agency. However, since the decision not to delegate is only one of several options available to the president, I am interested in explaining the conditions under which presidents prefer the establishment of restrictive procedures. Previously, I asserted that the greater the intra-branch conflict (i.e., divergent preferences) -- due to factionalization within parties, coalition government and incomplete appointment powers -- the greater the potential for agency slippage. Since it may not be possible for a president to resolve this problem by appointing ministers and agency heads with preferences identical to their own, a president will support the creation or reform of administrative procedures in order to mitigate the risks of agency loss inherent in delegation by reducing their agents’ discretion. I now turn to the working hypotheses.

Inter-Party Conflict: Coalition Cabinets

Coalition formation in a parliamentary and presidential system is different because the rules of the game are different. First, the president will be around for four to six years, since the terms of the executive and assembly are fixed and not contingent on mutual confidence. Second, there is one actor (the president) who is elected by popular vote and has the discretion to become the leader of a coalition. Third, the president has the discretion to choose the actors (parties) who will be invited to enter or forced to leave a coalition. Fourth, the president generally is associated with a political party that will be part of the coalition (Olin 1998).

Building a majority coalition in presidential democracies (as well as in parliamentary systems) is important for passing the executives’ preferred policies through the legislature. Also, because presidents without a legislative majority do not fall, several outcomes are more likely: divided government, possibly resulting in deadlock {fn7: Deadlock is defined as a situation in which the status quo cannot be replaced by an alternative policy because the president objects any change acceptable to the legislature, and vice versa. Deadlock is a form of policy stability (Magar 1998).} impeachment, and regime instability.

Despite arguments regarding the difficulties of building executive coalitions in presidential systems (Linz 1990, 1994; Valenzuela 1994), the existence of shared presidencies (when one party is not large enough to win the presidency so an electoral coalition is formed) warrants a more in-depth analysis of the potential influence of this factor on the degree of presidential control. {fn8: The literature indicates that it is frequently difficult to retain stable coalitions in presidential systems. One reason might be that, unlike a single, disciplined party, coalitions do not have a unified electoral goal. Each party within the coalition wants to maximize its own vote share in the next election. Therefore, one might predict that as the presidential term elapses, the probability of a party staying in the coalition will decline. This is because at as the end of a presidential term approaches, parties are increasingly focused on maximizing their vote share in the upcoming election.}

When coalitions form, the president confronts a situation where she must share executive powers with coalition partners from other parties, most likely representing different constituencies and policy preferences. Therefore, if there is a coalition executive, such that the cabinet represents multiple parties, then in order to consolidate power, there is a higher probability of the president initiating (or supporting initiation of) administrative procedures. This is because, on average, we would expect to see lower congruence of preferences between the president and her party and other parties sharing the presidency. The other parties sharing the executive branch are likely to oppose at least some of the president’s preferred policies, which may differ significantly from their own policy agenda. When this situation arises, there is a greater possibility that the president’s party will be unable to achieve its preferred policies. This leads directly to the first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: The president will prefer more extensive procedural constraints on bureaucrats when the executive branch is shared among multiple parties of a coalition, than when the executive branch is dominated by the president’s party alone.

Intra-Party Conflict: Factionalization and Single-Party Cabinets

The mere existence of factions does not translate into greater intra-party conflict. However, if some exogenous factor reduces factional leaders’ incentives to cooperate, intra-party conflict may increase. Possible factors might include electoral rule changes, decline in state resources or disputes over presidential nominations and cabinet posts. The point is that a single faction cannot make an independent decision but instead, the factions have to bargain over the cabinet posts.

A circumstance in which a small number of large factions control approximately an equal numbers of cabinet posts as the president’s faction poses the greatest threat or obstacle to the president’s preferred policies. {fn9: Geddes (1994, 95) argues that "…where patronage is equally distributed among the two or more largest parties, and politicians can gain even a small amount from a vote for reform, members of all the larger parties have reason to vote for it in the legislature" (emphasis added). While inter-party and intra-party competition are distinct concepts, the underlying logic of the two types of party competition is similar. Just as parties compete for influence within the government, so too do factions compete for influence within parties. Therefore, it seems reasonable to suspect that relatively large, and thus influential, factions within a party will exert a disproportionate influence upon that party’s policy agenda.}

This situation is most threatening to a present’s agenda because: (a) there may be a relatively low congruence of preferences between the president’s faction and the other factions within her party and (b) the opposing factions may be large enough to effectively block the president’s agenda. Therefore, under this circumstance, the president has an incentive to institutionalize her control by supporting administrative procedures. For example, suppose a president would like to increase domestic competition in a given industry, in order to improve national economic performance. However, suppose also that the status quo policies benefit the opposing factions within the president’s party, whose primary support constituencies favor the status quo. In this instance, the president’s preferences are at odds with those of other factions within her own party. To reduce the ability of status quo-oriented factions to block economic reforms, the president may seek to make the economic decision-making process more transparent to the public, thereby exposing the opponents of economic reform within her party. The opponents of reform may, for instance, be employing corrupt practices (i.e., credit allocation for their favorite firms) to limit domestic competition. Hence, administrative procedures can serve to weaken the president’s opponents within her own party. The president may also want to break political stalemates within her party or to put pressure on her opponents to get her policies enacted. This leads to a second hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: The president will prefer more extensive procedural constraints on bureaucrats when the ruling party is factionalized and when those factions control approximately equal numbers of cabinet posts, relative to when a single faction (the president’s) dominates the cabinet posts or factionalization is absent.

 

Degree of Appointment and Dismissal Powers

The extent of presidential powers in the appointment and dismissal of the cabinet is one factor among several (see Shugart and Carey 1992 for an extensive discussion) that are important for determining the degree of presidential control over the executive branch. Table 1 (adapted from Shugart and Carey 1992, 119) shows the range of presidential and assembly powers for appointing and dismissing cabinets across different presidential types.

I focus on the variation of appointment and dismissal powers that exist within "presidential" systems. In countries where the constitution limits the president’s ability to appoint and dismiss her cabinet, divergent preferences within the executive are clearly more likely to arise and persist than in circumstances where presidents have unlimited appointment and dismissal powers.

As can be seen in Table 1, the upper left box shows pure presidential cases, where the cabinet is strictly accountable to the president. In the lower left are also presidential cases, but where the president’s authority over the cabinet is reduced by the requirement that the assembly approve of cabinet nominations.

Only the United States, Korea, Nigeria, Philippines, and Taiwan require any form of legislative approval for presidential cabinet nominees. I will briefly discuss the Korean and Philippines experiences (see section 5 for a discussion of Taiwan's experience). Since the enactment of the 1987 Korean constitution, only the prime minister is subject to confirmation by the unicameral assembly. The prime minister then appoints the other cabinet ministers. Neither the

TABLE 1. Appointing and Dismissing Cabinets

Dismiss

President Assembly Either

 

President

Presidential

(Costa Rica,

Venezuela)

Premier-presidential (Finland, Iceland)

President-parliamentary (Chile pre-1925, Namibia, Peru, Sri Lanka)

Appoint

Assembly

 

Parliamentary systems

 
 

Both

Other presidential system (Korea 1987, Nigeria, Philippines, Taiwan pre-1997* US)

Most premier-presidential systems (France, Portugal 1982)

Portugal 1976

Taiwan 1997

* Taiwan's constitution prior to the 1997 amendments required votes of no confidence to be approved by two-thirds majority. Therefore, I consider Taiwan a case where the primary authority to remove ministers from office is with the president. This is consistent with other scholars' view on this issue (Cheng and Haggard 199X, Shugart and Haggard 1998). As of July 1997, the votes of no confidence requirement was reduced from super-majority to more than 50%.

prime minister nor any other cabinet ministers are subject to the ongoing confidence of the national assembly. Therefore, only the president can dismiss cabinet ministers. As Shugart and Carey (1992) point out, "If presidents are forced by the assembly to compromise considerably in the choice of this official [the prime minister], then they could endure significant agency loss in the composition of ‘their’ entire cabinet" (111). This suggests that the confirmation role of the national assembly in Korea vis-a-vis the prime minister could, under some circumstances, represent a significant threat to the president’s policy agenda.

In the Philippines, cabinet nominations are subject to approval not by the entire Congress, but by the Congressional Commission on Appointments, consisting of the president of the Senate as well as twelve senators and twelve representatives. Commission members are selected according to the proportional representation of parties in each chamber (Philippine constitution, Article VI, Section 18, and Article VII, Section 16). The president of the Senate presides over the commission, but only casts a vote on appointments in the case of a tie (Shugart and Carey 1992, 111). As in Korea, if the president’s policy preferences differ from those of the dominant forces in the legislature, a situation of divergent preferences between the president and the cabinet ministers may arise.

In summary, presidential initiative in the appointment nomination process is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the president to obtain her ideal ministerial candidates. Additionally, the authority to dismiss the cabinet can also affect the composition of the executive. In the cases of Korea, the Philippines, and the U.S., the policy preferences of cabinet members may be similar to, but somewhat removed from, the president’s ideal preferences. This is because presidents in these cases do not have unlimited appointment power as in most other presidential systems (e.g., Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, or Venezuela). The assembly would prefer either an empty seat or constant turnover, or to confirm a nomination at a point somewhat removed from the president’s ideal (but not too far removed, since the president can always dismiss a minister who is too far from presidential preferences.) {fn10: See Shugart and Carey (1992, 121-26) for an extensive discussion of the appointment-dismissal game.} This leads to the third hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: The more constrained the president is in her appointment and dismissal powers, the more the president will prefer extensive administrative procedural constraints, and vice versa.

Degree of Civil Service Autonomy

Related to the president's ability to freely appoint and dismiss cabinet members is the degree of civil service autonomy. At one end of the continuum, the civil service may be highly professionalized with a merit-based recruitment and promotion system, giving presidents less control over the bureaucracy. At the other end, the civil service may be highly politicized, with a personalistic, patronage-based system, giving presidents greater control over their agents. For example, government posts in Latin America traditionally have been filled by people who promised the largest contribution to (1) the president’s personal welfare (usually members of their own families); (2) consolidating political support for themselves or their parties; and (3) administrative effectiveness (probably the most technically qualified applicants) (Geddes 1994, 27). Moreover, Amorim Neto states (1998, 11):

"…the fact that Latin American bureaucracies, generally speaking, are staffed mostly either with retainers (long-term public servants with no professional qualifications) or politicos (short-term public servants with no professional qualifications) (Riggs 1994) makes control of the executive branch an even more decisive question for presidents. Retainers represent a great challenge to presidents' ability to govern effectively because they are appointed by former presidents and political parties other than that of the incumbent president…retainers' interests usually conflict with those of current chief executives. For Latin American presidents, controlling the executive branch's bureaucracy means, above all, countervailing the power of retainers."

If civil servants are protected under the law (e.g., cannot be easily fired), there is a greater possibility of agency loss. From the civil servant’s point-of-view, knowing that he cannot be fired for his actions, there is less risk for him in deviating from the president’s policy preferences. Therefore, a president who cannot unilaterally fire civil servants any time they step out-of-line needs alternative mechanisms to constrain the behavior of her agents.

3.2. Alternative Hypotheses

One might posit that presidents support restrictive procedures because over time, as the size of the bureaucracy increases, so must the extent of administrative procedures. If the size of the bureaucracy motivates the variance in the extent of administrative procedures, we might expect to find that two countries with comparably-sized governments would also share a similar administrative procedural structure. One way to refute this hypothesis is to find countries that are similar in the size of their bureaucracies, but differ in the extent of their administrative procedures. I can also refute this hypothesis by predicting instances where procedures will be rolled back, or reversed.

Another alternative hypothesis is that variation in administrative procedures may simply result from the differing policy agendas of different presidents. President A might seek more protections for workers, which means more procedures for bureaucrats to follow and enforce. President B might not be interested in worker protection but is interested in protecting the environment. Variation in administrative procedures in these cases might be explained by one of two factors: either differing degrees of interest group willingness to yield influence to different presidents or differing degrees of conflict within the decision making institutions. In the latter case, I argue that when conflict within the decision making institutions is relatively high, presidents will seek to slow down administrative decision making in order to find out what bureaucrats are up to.

In the former case, the degree of interest group influence on presidential decision making might be a function of a given interest group’s role in the economy or its degree of organization (i.e., ability to influence a particular party). For example, Korean big business groups (Chaebol) accounted for a major portion of the Korean economy. The top thirty Chaebol in the manufacturing sector increased their share of overall manufacturing output between 1979 and 1984 from 32.8% to 67.4%, about the same rate of increase as between 1974 and 1979 (Clifford 1994). Hence, the Chaebol’s dominance in the Korean economy alone cannot explain variation in presidential decision making. Also, interest groups’ ability to impact policy choices varies if the institutions within which they must operate systematically advantage some groups over others. Although the Chaebol’s dominance, in terms of their rate of increase in manufacturing output remained consistent between 1974 and 1984, their ability to influence the president’s industrial policy changed under Chun Doo Hwan’s regime.

Under Park Chung Hee’s (1962-79) creation of a deliberation council, the Chaebol groups had direct influence on industrial policy making. While the reasons for Park’s institutionalization of this deliberation council are important, they are beyond the scope of this paper. It is, however, worth noting that after Park’s assassination in 1979, Chun, his successor, dismantled the deliberation council and excluded the Chaebol from policy making. The point is that a powerful Korean interest group -- the Chaebol -- exerted differing degrees of influence over presidential policy decisions as the policy making institutions varied. I now turn to the operationalization of the dependent variable.

4.1. Defining Administrative Procedures

In this section, I operationalize the dependent variable. What constitutes administrative procedures reform? How do we know when there is a lot of it? As previously discussed, several studies argue that when Congress delegates policy decisions to the bureaucracy, it also chooses the procedures that guide agencies to make decisions consistent with the preferences of the legislative coalition that passed the agency’s enabling legislation.

McCubbins (1985) identifies four key elements of structural solutions to problems of agency shirking and slippage: institutional setting, regulatory scope, instruments and procedural requirements. First, Congress, in a regulatory act, defines the institutional setting wherein the regulatory activity is to be undertaken. This choice determines the degree of independence of administrators from Congressional control. Second, by defining the regulatory scope -- the range of potential regulatory targets that the agency administering the regulation is empowered to address – Congress limits the administrator’s substantive discretion and protects itself against manipulation and exploitation by its agents. Third, Congress defines the instruments that an agency can utilize in implementing the policies set forth in a regulatory act (e.g., command and control, provision of information, direct provision of some public good and decentralized economic incentives). Fourth, to promulgate a regulation, the administrator must adhere to procedural requirements, which are delineated in the act (725-27). Usually, however, policy-specific requirements are written into specific statutes governing an agency. Still, in the American politics literature, "regulatory act" often refers specifically to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which specifies the following requirements (McNollgast 1987, 257-58):

1) The agency cannot announce a new policy without warning, but must instead give "notice" that it will consider an issue, and do so without prejudice or bias in favor of any particular action.

2) Agencies must solicit "comments" and allow all interested parties to communicate their views.

3) Agencies must allow "participation" in the decision-making process, with the extent often mandated by the organic statute creating the agency as well as by the courts (McCubbins and Page 1987). If hearings are held, then parties may be allowed to bring forth testimony and evidence and often to cross-examine other witnesses.

4) Agencies must deal explicitly with the evidence presented to them and provide a rationalizable link between the evidence and their decisions.

In short, there are more procedural requirements for agency decision-making when there are more public hearings and comment, more points of access to agency decision making by outside parties, more access to judicial review, and more strenuous burdens of proof regarding standards of evidence (McCubbins and Page 1987, 420).

As McNollgast (1987, 258-59) explain, these requirements serve as a valuable tool for elected officials in governing information collection and dissemination by agencies. The political implications are critical for the following reasons: 1) Since agencies must announce its intentions to examine a policy issue prior to a new decision, hidden information and action is less likely. 2) Through the notice and comment requirement, agencies must take into account the relevant political interests before making a new decision. In doing so, agencies consider political costs and benefits associated with the range of actions. However, the weight of interest group participation will depend upon the level of organization. Dispersed groups who do not or can not (because participation is stacked) participate are less likely to influence agencies’ decision. 3) Since the process is public, decisions made between agencies and its favorite constituencies that conflict with the Congress or the president are less likely. 4) Any strategic advantage that agencies might have had is constrained by the sequential nature and "slowing down" of the decision making process. Each step of the process gives principals multiple opportunities to respond when an agency deviates from their policy preferences. 5) Lastly, administrative participation works as a gauge of political interest and controversiality (Noll 1971). In essence, arduous procedural requirements have the benefit of selectively causing the most controversial issues to generate the most complete information. Furthermore, it ensures in advance, "warning about the likely decision that, in the absence of political intervention, the agency is most likely to make" (McNollgast 1987, 259).

While the above definition of administrative procedures originates from studies of the U.S. Congress, I adopt them for purposes of studying presidential incentives for initiating administrative reforms in other presidential systems.

4.2. Measuring Intra-Branch Conflict

The goal in this section is to propose an indicator of the level of conflict within the executive branch. (Note that the tests proposed in this section shall be carried out in a future version of this paper.) Hypotheses 1 and 2 can be tested by determining the partisan distribution of ministerial portfolios. To do so, I shall gather information regarding cabinet ministers' party or factional affiliation (if any), appointment and dismissal dates, and the legislative weight of their parties or factions. I assume that if cabinet composition is determined through a bargaining process by presidents and parties (or factions), portfolios are distributed approximately proportional to their legislative weight. This does not mean that all cabinets in presidential systems form according to proportionality. However, it will be important for measuring those ministerial distributions that deviate from proportionality. The idea is the more cabinet shares deviate from proportionality, the less partisan should be the cabinet.

In order to capture the relationship between cabinet shares and legislative weight, I employ the index of Cabinet-Party Congruence (Cg) devised by Amorim Neto (1998). {fn11: This index is based on Rose's (1984) index of disproportionality which measures the amount of deviation from proportionality between seats and votes that a given election produces.} The index's formula is:

where: is the percentage of ministries party receives when the cabinet is formed;

is the percentage of legislative seats party holds in the total of seats commanded by the parties joining the cabinet when the cabinet is formed.

First, we add up the values for all parties joining the cabinet and for all ministers and then divide the total by two. Second, subtracting the result from 1 determines the congruence rate for a given cabinet. The resulting index varies between zero (no congruence between ministerial shares and legislative seats) and 1 (an upper limit of perfect correspondence between cabinet shares and legislative weight).

Hypothesis 3 can be tested by measuring the degree of appointment and dismissal powers of popularly elected presidents. I employ a variation of Shugart and Carey's (1992, 150) indices of Cabinet Formation and Cabinet Dismissal, which I have collapsed into two categories. The scoring is as follows:

Cabinet Formation

Cabinet Dismissal

1 = President names cabinet ministers without need for confirmation or investiture by assembly

1 = President dismisses cabinet ministers at will

0 = President names cabinet ministers subject to confirmation or investiture by assembly

0 = Restricted powers of dismissal

5. Preliminary Evidence

The goal of this section is to examine the variation in Korea and Taiwan’s administrative procedures and track them to changes in the political environment.

Korea

Table 2 provides a list of Korea’s administrative procedures laws and the passage dates, a brief summary of the requirements under the particular statute, and the political impact(s) of each change in the policy process.

[Table 2 About Here]

My theory holds that the extent of administrative procedures preferred by presidents is determined by the degree of intra-executive conflict (i.e., divergent preferences). I have argued that the higher the level of conflict within the executive branch, the more likely that the president will prefer extensive administrative procedures.

Reform of administrative procedures occurred in Korea under the presidency of Kim Young Sam (hereafter KYS), of the Democratic Liberal Party (DLP). In 1990, two years before KYS was elected president, Roh Tae Woo’s (a conservative politician handpicked by Korea’s military leaders as the ruling party’s presidential candidate) Democratic Justice Party (DJP) merged with two opposition parties to form the DLP; one of which was KYS’s Reunification Democratic Party (RDP). {fn12: The other opposition party was Kim Jong Pil’s New Democratic Republican Party (NDRP) – a conservative party with close ties to the military.} This political bargain occurred because Roh’s party lacked a working majority in the National Assembly. With the merger, Roh could count on his policies being passed and in return, KYS was promised the party’s nomination for the 1992 presidential election.

Presidents have two specific goals when forming their cabinets: (1) To implement their legislative programs and (2) to control the executive branch bureaus and agencies. My project focuses on the second goal. In Korea, the 1990 merger of the three parties meant that KYS could not control the bureaucracy entirely through cabinet appointments of his factional cohorts. Rather, he had to share his presidency by appointing cabinet ministers from the other two factions. In this situation, some agencies in effect answered to two principals – the president and a cabinet minister from another faction.

In addition, the merger also meant that a majority of the career civil servants – especially senior level bureaucrats, who previously served authoritarian leaders – remained in their positions and could not be fired. It seems likely that reforms served KYS’s interests because he inherited a bureaucracy composed completely of structures developed under military and DJP governments. (The DJP was founded in 1981 by former President, Chun Doo Hwan, who ruled Korea under a military dictatorship until its democratic transition in 1987.)

I argue that by reforming administrative procedures, KYS was able to better control bureaucrats who were part of the old core of the DJP – especially with regard to ministries wherein the power-sharing agreement required that he appoint a minister from another faction of the ruling party. Since Korea has a merit-based civil service system, the potential for agency slippage is high. Therefore, extensive procedures would effectively limit bureaucrats' autonomy and slow down their decision-making process.

Upon further examination of the timing of the various administrative procedural laws, an interesting pattern emerges. During the early part of his single five-year term, President Kim appears to have supported an administrative procedure act that required public notice and comment periods for proposed rules. This change raised the probability that interest groups could veto agency's policy decisions. However, these procedures worked best for those interest groups that were particularly strong and well organized. As Kim’s term elapsed, however, the 1994 APA was amended to require more specific and detailed procedures. As can be seen in Table 2, one major requirement of the 1997 amendments is that agencies must consider specific decision criteria when enacting regulations. Constraining agencies to a set of specific criteria (e.g., compliance costs for an emissions standard) will likely induce them to become increasingly responsive to select interest groups. However, this effect is not always assured, as bureaucrats and interest group can behave in unexpected ways. Therefore, if the president "…wants to decrease uncertainty about the effect of this procedural requirement, [she] can reduce agency independence by establishing shorter deadlines and less access to outside expertise." (Bawn 1995, 65)

If my hypothesis is correct, I expect to find a higher degree of cabinet partisanship during the latter part of Kim’s term than during the earlier part. An important factor that might have influenced Kim’s decision to support more extensive procedures was the 1995 defection of the right wing of his party. Though the number of factions represented in his cabinet (but not necessarily the intensity of cabinet partisanship) declined from three to two, Kim for the first time confronted a viable threat to his hold on power by the defection of the right wing. {fn13: With the defection, led by the ruling party’s chairman, Kim Jong Pil, came the formation of a new party, advocating the interests of the middle class and rural population. Shortly thereafter, his new party merged with a (rightist) splinter group, in order to gain control of 50 legislative seats (out of 299 total seats). By summer of 1996, further defections had reduced the ruling party’s majority in the National Assembly to a razor-thin 2 seats.} It is possible that this event led Kim to "lock in" his preferences by supporting a more restrictive set of procedures, particularly given that the constitution limits presidents to a single term.

Taiwan

In Taiwan, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) passed in January 1999. Table 3 provides a brief summary of the key aspects of the APA and the political impact(s) of each change in the policy process.

[Table 3 About Here]

As was required in Korea's APA, all agencies must notify the public and record proposed rules and reorganizations. Agencies must also undertake investigations regarding administrative action appeals and notify all relevant parties of their decisions. Another major feature of Taiwan's APA is its freedom of information provision. If requested, most agencies must disclose information to the public. Furthermore, the APA allows outside groups to participate in public hearings. This provision is also included in the U.S. APA and previous research has explicitly modeled the hearing requirement in games of incomplete information. Spiller and Urbiztondo (1991, 26), for example, have shown that by allowing interest groups to participate at hearing stages, the president and Congress have an advantage in dealing with asymmetric information that ex-post monitoring cannot overcome. In sum, the above requirements raise the likelihood that well-organized groups will affect the administrative decision making process and constrain bureaucratic activities by adding more checks.

TABLE 4. KMT’s Electoral Performance in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan Elections

 

Year

Number of re-elected seats*

KMT vote

Share (%)

KMT seat

Share (%)

 

1975

29

77.6

81.1

 

1980

69

71.9

82.1

 

1983

70

69.4

87.7

 

1986

72

66.7

83.1

 

1989

101

57.0

68.3

 

1992

125

53.0

58.4

 

1995

128

46.1

52.3

Source: Central Election Committee, various years, excerpted from Lin (1996).

* The Legislative Yuan has 225 members, 168 members elected for a three year term in multi-seat constituencies, 8 members representing the aboriginals, 41 members elected by proportional representation and 6 members representing the overseas Chinese elected by proportional representation (Taiwan Constitution, Article 4).

Since 1949, the Kuomintang (KMT, or the Nationalist) has been Taiwan’s ruling party. Under this single-party system, Lee Teng-hui, KMT Chairman and President since 1988, did not face much conflict within the executive branch. Therefore, he did not have any incentive to constrain the bureaucracy by pushing for administrative reform. However, the KMT’s electoral performance has deteriorated over the past two decades. Table 4 above shows this pattern for both the KMT’s vote and seat shares.

Also, in 1993, a group of right wing KMT legislators (representing most of the New KMT Alliance or NK) defected and formed the New Party (NP). As a result, the Legislative Yuan was now composed of three types of legislators, representing three political parties/groups: the KMT, DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), and New KMT Alliance/NP. As can be seen in Table 5, the three parties/groups have different positions concerning national identity, political reform and foreign policy – the three primary issue dimensions in Taiwanese politics. Lin (1996, 194) explains these divisions: "Among them, the KMT is the largest and most heterogeneous group, including many native Taiwanese politicians elected in the rural districts, and some conservatives who did not join the NP. Nevertheless, the KMT members tend to support the party on crucial issues. The dominant issue dimension is national identity, with which other smaller issues are sometimes confounded." In fact, a significant percentage of Taiwanese legislators have been supported by ideological voters. Through a rigorous empirical study, Lin (1996) supports the claim that legislators "have the incentive to adopt distinguishable ideological positions. Consequently, they have the motivation to sabotage the KMT’s distributive mechanism to lead the agenda onto ideological debates" (203).

TABLE 5. Positions of Major Parties/Groups on Key Issues in Taiwan

Party/Group

National Identity

Political Reform

Foreign Policy

DPP

Taiwan

Criticizing the KMT’s authoritarianism and monopoly of political resources

Seeking foreign support; downplay threat from the PRC

KMT

Republic of China on Taiwan

Democratization = Taiwanization of the KMT

Seeking foreign support; private diplomacy of the president

NK/NP

Republic of China

Criticizing the President’s leadership; regarding over-Taiwanization as hastening independence

Balance between foreign policy and mainland policy

Source: Lin (1996, 194)

With the KMT’s dominance no longer as secure as before, Lee Teng-hui’s incentives changed. After the right wing faction of the KMT broke off, Lee faced greater potential for the opposition parties to block his policies and political appointments.

In Taiwan, the president nominates the President of the Executive Yuan, with the consent of the Legislative Yuan. The President of Taiwan then appoints the Vice-president of the Executive Yuan, ministers and chairmen of Commissions, and ministers without portfolio upon the recommendation of the President of the Executive Yuan (Constitution of Taiwan, Articles 53-56). The President and Vice-president of both the Judicial Yuan {fn14: The Grand Justices (life-time appointments) are nominated by the President with the consent of the Control Yuan} and Examination Yuan {fn15: The Examination Yuan is responsible for the recruitment and promotion of the civil service.} are also appointed by the President, with the consent of the Control Yuan {fn16: The Control Yuan exercises the powers of consent, impeachment, censure, and auditing. Members are elected by Provincial and Municipal Councils, the local Councils of Mongolia and Tibet, and Chinese citizens residing abroad. Members of the Control Yuan serve a six-year term and are eligible for re-appointment.} (Articles 77-81 and 83-104). The only presidential appointment in the Control Yuan that must be approved by the Legislative Yuan is the Auditor General. The president and vice-president are elected by its Members.

Given the declining electoral dominance of the KMT and the major issue divisions among the three key parties/groups, if Lee Teng-hui’s policy preferences differ from those of the majority in the legislature, a situation of divergent preferences between the president and the cabinet appointees may arise. This suggests that the confirmation role of the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan vis-a-vis the President of the Executive Yuan and Auditor General of the Control Yuan may, under some conditions, represent a significant threat to the president’s policy agenda. Hence, Lee Teng-hui now has an incentive to support administrative procedural reform with the goal of controlling the bureaucracy.

6. Current Research Agenda

This paper is part of a larger project that has three major parts. Part one develops a formal model of delegation within the executive branch to derive hypotheses concerning the conditions under which presidents will prefer administrative procedures in order to control their agents. As discussed above, preliminary analysis indicates that presidents will prefer more extensive procedural constraints when: (1) the executive branch is shared among multiple parties of a coalition, (2) the ruling party is factionalized and those factions control approximately equal numbers of cabinet posts, and (3) the president is constrained in her appointment and dismissal powers.

Part two of my project tests these hypotheses by examining a large set of presidential and parliamentary democracies. The logic of my argument should apply to parliamentary systems as well. Although in most parliamentary democracies, the parliament selects the chief executive and chooses the cabinet, intra-branch conflict between the executive and individual cabinet ministers might arise in the way I have described for separation-of-power systems. {fn17: See Huber and Lupia (1998) for an argument concerning delegation by unstable principals and how ministerial turnover affects government actions in parliamentary democracies.} I intend to determine through statistical analysis whether or not intra-executive branch conflict significantly affects the likelihood of adopting an APA. I take a country-year as my unit of observation and create two categories: those countries with APAs and those without such laws. I thus create a dichotomous dependent variable and conduct a logit analysis. My key independent variables are various measures of intra-party conflict (e.g., cabinet partisanship).

Finally, I conduct case studies of the politics of APA’s and environmental and industrial safety and health regulations. If my theory is correct, I expect to find evidence of more procedural requirements for environmental and industrial safety and health standards when intra-executive conflict divides the president’s support coalition than when there is a consensus over these issues.

Implications

In this paper I have presented a preliminary argument to explain why presidents prefer the establishment of restrictive administrative procedures in some countries and not in others. Previous studies have concentrated primarily on delegation from legislatures to executives but have paid less attention to the president's ability to control the agencies nominally under her authority. My study fills this gap by taking into account both institutional and coalitional differences across separation-of-power democracies. I have argued that the greater the intra-executive branch conflict (i.e., degree of cabinet partisanship) the greater the likelihood that presidents will support restrictive procedures.

In addition, my argument lends insight into how institutions affect the choice of administrative procedures. Specifically, when there is general agreement within a coalition cabinet about policy outcomes, presidents are less likely to support restrictive procedures. However, when there is significant disagreement within the coalition cabinet, the choice of administrative procedures will be influenced by the executive bargain struck between the president and cabinet minister. While the evidence presented in this paper in support of my hypotheses is preliminary and incomplete, I believe it is sufficiently compelling to warrant further exploration.

TABLE 2. Administrative Procedural Reforms in Korea

 

PRESIDENT YR PROCEDURAL REQUIREMENT IMPACT

Roh Tae Woo

(term began Feb. 1988, ending Feb. 1993)

1988-1992

Amends 1985 Administrative Appeals Act:

--Designates administrative agency as ruling authority for appeals (Aug. 1988, Nov. 1991).

--Declares the organization and operation of the Administrative Appeals Commission to be determined by presidential decree (Nov. 1991).

--Weakens administrative procedures by politicizing appeals process

Kim Young Sam (term began Feb. 1993)

April

1994

Basic Law for Administrative Regulation and Civil Affairs Act (BLARCAA):

--Abolishes administrative guidelines, notices, and regulations lacking legal basis.

--Requires public notice (usually more than 20 days but period varies for each case) and comment period for proposed rules.

--New regulations may be enforced after 30 days from the date of announcement of review results.

--Centralizes final confirmation & inspection of regulations to Prime Minister or Minister of General Affairs (MGA; oversight agency).

 

 

 

--Raises probability that interest group vetoes agency's policy for groups sufficiently strong and organized.

--If controversy increases then more information

Kim Young Sam

(term ends Feb. 1998)

Aug

1997

Amends 1994 BLARCAA:

--Requires agency to consider specific criteria in enacting regulations & determining scope and method (enforcement feasibility, burden & inconvenience on relevant party, duplication of existing regs, limit [free] competition, cost impact, standards for review are fair, objective & clear).

--Requires consultation with other agencies & opinion gathering of local govt., private & research institutions.

--Requires agency to review enforcement results regularly.

--Centralizes authority to set guidelines for improvement of regs to MGA – w/PM’s approval.

--Optional regulation review committee (personnel from relevant ministries) can be formed by MGA based on agency’s regs review & consultation with other agencies. (Except laws for business deregulations)

--Raises probabilities higher that interest group vetoes agency's policy for selected groups.

--Avoids ex post conflict, more checks. Slows down agency decision making process.

 

TABLE 3. Taiwan Administrative Procedure Act

 

PRESIDENT YR PROCEDURAL REQUIREMENT IMPACT

Lee Teng-hui

(sworn into office in Jan. 1988, upon death of President Chiang Ching-kuo, who had been inaugurated for a second six-year term in May 1984; reelected by the Assembly in Mar. 1990; popularly reelected in Mar. 1996.)

 

Jan. 1999

--Requires public notice for proposed rules and agency reorganizations (Articles 9 & 11).

--Requires agency investigation of evidence and facts regarding appeals. Must record and notify relevant parties of decision justifications (Articles 36-43).

--Allows public access to agencies' information (except national security matters) (Articles 44-46).

--Agencies must notify or announce in government document (or any other method) the relevant parties of a public hearing well in advance. Notice should include: purpose, names of participants, date and location, and procedure of hearing (Articles 54-56).

--Chairman of public hearing should be Chief Executive of agency or any other appointee. Procedures allow relevant parties to state opinion, evidence and with Chairman's permission, ask for testimony by witness, investigator, and relevant parties. Relevant parties can claim dissent to Chairman's decision. Chairman can override dissent. Entire process must be recorded (Articles 60-66).

--Raises probability that interest group vetoes agency's policy for groups sufficiently strong and organized.

 

 

 

--If controversy increases then more information.

 

 

--Avoids ex post conflict, more checks. Slows down agency decision making process.

 

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