A Blueprint for “Regulatory Democracy”: Empowering the Public in the Design and Implementation of New Safeguards
By James Goodwin and Lew Blank
Our nation faces several critical challenges — from confronting climate change, to ensuring the stability of our economy, to safeguarding the public against new and emerging threats from rapidly evolving internet technology. Our regulatory system must play a vital role if we are to overcome these challenges in a manner that is effective, timely, equitable, and fair.
For over a century, the federal regulatory system has formed a crucial part of the U.S. constitutional system of governance, serving as the institutional forum in which agencies translate congressional legislation into concrete policies that meet on-the-ground challenges. Agencies must follow strict procedural rules when implementing these programs, including incorporating feedback from public stakeholders.
A defining characteristic of this approach is the active role that the public plays in the process. Ongoing and meaningful engagement ensures that the resulting policies accommodate and appropriately balance competing values. It also provides an opportunity to identify and account for practical implementation challenges without unduly sacrificing effectiveness in achieving desired policy goals.
By and large, the U.S. regulatory system has served the American people well, making our lives better, our economy fairer, and each of us freer to pursue our potential than we would have been otherwise if it had not existed. Nevertheless, it can and should work better in helping us to accomplish these goals.
In recent decades in particular, the “public” has been relegated further to the margins of “public policy,” as changes in prevailing practices and legal doctrines have diminished attention to regulatory beneficiaries in the “how” and the “why” of the rulemaking process. A bill currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives called the Stop Corporate Capture Act (H.R. 6107) seeks to reverse this trend by recalibrating “the rules for how we make rules.”
In April 2022, Data for Progress surveyed 1,179 likely voters nationally to measure public attitudes toward several of the key provisions in the Stop Corporate Capture Act. The results reflect broad support across the political spectrum for these proposed changes to the regulatory system. These results suggest that legislation aimed at modernizing the regulatory system by making it more inclusive and equitable would not only improve its performance, but also increase public confidence in this critical part of our government.