Bureaucratizing Democracy, Democratizing Bureaucracy

Wendy Nelson Espeland

IPR working papers from Institute for Policy Resarch at Northwestern University

Abstract: What happens when democratic principles become understood and enacted through a particular conception of rationalisty? Does the linking of democracy with instrumental rationality improve citizens' access to public decisions or change the terms by which they participate in these? I examine these questions in my analysis of a controversial environmental decision where a group of federal bureaucrats adapted rational decision models as a strategy for improving agency decision making. Concerned to bolster public participation in its decisions, and to find a way to integrate complex and diverse forms of information, these bureaucrats believed that their models would help reduce conflict, legitimate their investigations, and result in more "rational" decisions. I argue that the adoption of these models did change the politics surrounding this decision. Rational decision models facilitated including the preferences of diverse groups into the decision and helped to legitimate a compromise policy. But these models did so in terms that some groups believed distorted their views and misrepresented their interests. A hazard of this "procedural democracy" is that it confers a formal equality that can diminish rather than enhance power.

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:nwuipr:96-32

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