This Professor Explores What Regulators Are Really Like
William Araiza takes a close look at the nuts and bolts of regulation and how experts can be put back in charge of regulatory agencies.
Federal regulators don’t sound exciting — and few of them are. However, they craft rules that impact the quality of our foods and the security of our financial markets. Contrary to popular belief, they’re accountable to but distinct from the federal government, as William Araiza explains early in the book:
“…one should be careful to distinguish between trust in political institutions and trust in regulatory ones. When Americans think of “the federal government,” they usually think of the former. In our politically polarized era, it may be unsurprising that Americans’ trust in “the federal government” is not particularly high, since it is likely that approximately half of the nation will dislike the political leaders that represent, in their minds, “the federal government.”
Regulators are often professionals trying to weigh different arguments and figure out the details of a policy goal set by each new administration. The tugs-of-war regulators engage in can be maddening. Over the past several decades, those tugs-of-war have overruled the expertise regulators are supposed to bring to their agencies.
What is Expertise and Why is it Important?
Anyone can pick up a few facts, but only a few people know what to do with them. Even that doesn’t capture what sets an expert apart from someone knowledgable and competent. Araiza quotes Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus’ definition of expertise:
“…complete contexts are unselfconsciously recognized and performance is related to them in a fluid way using cues that it is impossible to articulate and that if articulated would usually not correspond, or might even contradict, the rules explained to novices.”
In other words, experts can use knowledge without thinking about how they have to use it.
That’s an important skill for regulators. Not only do they have to become experts in their subjects. They also have to know how to regulate. Regulatory agencies are dense bureaucracies with many egos to satisfy inside and outside the agency.
When forces outside the agency become too involved, the policy expertise not only becomes sidelined. The process that turns expertise into judicially defensible policy breaks down too.
Unfortunately, that’s been happening to federal regulatory agencies since the Carter Adminsitration.
The Decline of Expertise in Regulatory Agencies
Some regulatory employees rise through the ranks on merit like a private business. Others are directly appointed by the president.
The ones directly appointed by the president are called Schedule C employees, and more of them have been appointed by the president each administration since 1976. “For example, Presdient Carter increased the number of such appointed positions from 911 to 1,566; later presidents continued that practice of growing those numbers.”
Araiza found that “the explosion of political appointee slots in agencies, from less than 300 in 1960 to more than 3,600 by 2016” occured “in a civil service that, to repeat, is essentially the same size as it was in 1960.”
That means political considerations can more easily override policy expertise. Araiza cites a group of scholars who surveyed six federal agencies. The survey asked about how information became policy, and one question asked about “the largest barrier within the agency to scientifically based decision-making.” These were the top five barriers:
Absence of leadership with needed scientific expertise
Influence of political appointees in your agency or department
Influence of the White House
Limited staff capacity
Delay in leadership making a decision
The pace of direct appointments has long since become unsustainable, and it hasn’t gone away. As of May 31, 2024, President Joe Biden only chose 631 nominees out of about 1,200 that the Senate must confirm. This isn’t a problem that began with him. That honor goes to President Carter. However, no president since 1976 has decided to reduce their influence on federal agencies.
Fiddling with Regulators has Affected Voters, Too
Early in the book, Araiza tells the story of Ronald Reagan’s speech against the “hundred-plus OSHA ladder-climbing regulations.” Reagan falsely claimed that OSHA had promulgated 144 regulations for safely climbing ladders. It was part of his campaign against large intrusive government forces.
That attitude hasn’t disappeared, and the consequences for the way voters choose their leaders are dire. Araiza describes the picture decades of attacks of varying quality against agencies have had on voters’ perceptions:
“The emerging picture is one in which regualtors — and, by extension, regulation — cannot be trusted. Instead, faith must be placed in one’s preferred political leader — the one who reflects a citizen’s own views back onto her. Whether that leader is President Reagan imposing his own deregulatory will, President Clinton presonalizing regulation through presidential administration, or President Trump asserting that only he can rescue the American people from a corrupt deep state, the leader promises to provide what the people want.”
The lack of faith in regulatory experts has turned into too much reverence for the person running for president. Many voters in both parties place too much importance on the president’s ability to affect regulations.
The president is far from a dictator. There are judicial and congressional limits on the president. The president also can’t hand-write regulations, no matter how much he may like to.
However, when environmental regualtors or workplace safety experts have to wait for key figures to be confirmed by the Senate or face political pressure to reach key conclusions, policies that Congress authorized the agencies to create and authorized the executive branch to implement fall short of their potential good.
Regulatory expertise isn’t a hot button issue, but it’s among the most important issues that still hasn’t come close to the public eye.