Policy Without Politicians

Have bureaucrats taken over the decision making role of politicians? This book offers a direct assessment of the role of bureaucrats in policy making by analysing how they shape policy in making decrees - laws that generally do not pass through full legislative scrutiny. These are often described as "secondary legislation" and are known by a variety of names (including décrets, arrêtés, administrative regulations, Verordnungen, statutory instruments). Such decrees offer an important vantage point for understanding bureaucratic power not only because they account for a large proportion of policy making activity within the executive, but also because they are made largely away from the glare of publicity. If bureaucrats have strong policy making powers and use them in a way that minimises political involvement in policy making, we would expect to find these powers especially evident in this "everyday" decision making. The book is based on research examining 52 decrees produced between 2005 and 2008 in six jurisdictions: France, the UK, Germany, Sweden, the United States and the European Union. The comparative perspective allows one to see how far different patterns of bureaucratic involvement in policy making are characteristic of particular political systems and how far they are a general feature of modern bureaucracies. The book asks three main questions about how these decrees are produced: when do politicians become involved in making them? What happens when politicians become involved? And what happens when they are not involved? The answers to these questions are provided by examination of primary source material as well as interviews with over 90 officials.

Edward C. Page BA (CNAA) MSc PhD (Strathclyde) FBA was at the University of Hull prior to joinging the LSE. Recent books include Changing Government Relations in Europe (co-editor with M Goldsmith) Routledge,2010; From the Active to the Enabling State (co-editor with the late Vincent Wright) Palgrave 2006; Policy Bureaucracy: Government With a Cast of Thousands (with the late Bill Jenkins) Oxford University Press, 2005; Governing by Numbers: Delegated Legislation and Everyday Policy Making, Hart Publishing 2001. He has written many articles on comparative public policy and administration and British government. He has been Sidney and Beatrice Webb Professor of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 2001.