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Shapiro, Martin --- "A Comparison of US and European Independent Agencies" [2010] ELECD 820; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter (eds), "Comparative Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Comparative Administrative Law

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446359

Section: Chapter 18

Section Title: A Comparison of US and European Independent Agencies

Author(s): Shapiro, Martin

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

18 A comparison of US and European independent
agencies
Martin Shapiro


A comparison of `independent' agencies in the United States and Europe inevitably
must address two questions. First, what do we mean by independence and from whom?
Second, why do we want some agencies to be independent? I consider each issue in turn
for the United States and the European Union.

1. The United States
No doubt a review of the whole history of public administration would reveal hundreds
of administrative units in many times and places that correspond to whatever definition
of `independent' we choose to adopt. A comparison of contemporary US-European
independent agencies safely may begin, however, with the US Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC) established in 1887. US agency independence begins in the context of
government regulation of private business enterprise in a resolutely capitalist economy.

1.1. What is independence? The case of the ICC
The ICC is the very model of, and indeed a principal source of, the more or less standard
`law and economics' model of capitalist regulation.1 The proliferation of rail lines owned
by a host of separate private entrepreneurs led to a curious paradox. From the point
of view of agricultural shippers, each rail line constituted a natural monopoly for the
second nearest line would be too far away from any given farm to offer an economically
feasible shipping alternative. From the railroads' point of view, however, two, or often
many more, lines that were indeed far apart in the agricultural ...