From Preference to Policy - A Traditional View

In an ideal democracy, the preferences of a nation’s citizens would determine government policy a 100% of the time. However, with a country consisting of over 300 million people (with a wide diversity of interest and knowledge on a torrent of issues) an ideal democracy is impossible to achieve and, to be perfectly honest, most likely not wanted as it would require a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of the voter. Instead, our democracy is based on the decisions made by our elected representatives and those our elective representatives put in charge of specific operations. Nevertheless, government policy should still be roughly in line with the people’s preferences by definition of being a democracy. The question is, “is it?”

Even if our elected representatives are fully committed to carrying out the people’s choices, the likelihood that our preferences for policy are converted into results is far from certain. Because of the sheer amount of legislation that must be implemented, it is necessary for Congress to distribute the workload among different agencies. These agencies are legally liable to Congress, however the problem becomes how well is Congress able to monitor these agencies? While the article presented here might seem a little foolish, it raises a legitimate point. While I don’t doubt the general intelligence of our representatives at large, the fact is that not too many are specialized in fields outside of government and law. Agencies deciding environmental policy or nuclear waste disposal regulations are the clear experts and Congress can really only trust their judgment. This creates a certain degree of agency autonomy that Congress can only loosely regulate.

These agencies have their own utility maximizing functions that are different from Congress and are, in turn, different from preferences of voters. While Weingast and Moran have provided support for the idea that Congress does indeed possess a sufficient incentive system for keeping agency policy making decisions in line, I believe evidence for the traditional view of agency autonomy is still a more aesthetically pleasing argument if not necessarily as strongly empirically supported. If it is true that agencies are indeed somewhat autonomous of Congress, it would seem that our present governmental structure of representative democracy is not the most efficient means of transforming voter preferences into policy results. Then again, maybe turning voter preferences into 100% results isn’t the best thing for a nation anyway.