Credible Commitment, Political Uncertainty or Policy Complexity? Explaining Variations in the Independence of Non-majoritarian Institutions in France

Abstract

A common feature of contemporary political systems is the increasing amount of delegation from governments to non-majoritarian institutions. Governments may decide to delegate authority to such institutions for reasons relating to credible commitments, political uncertainty, and policy complexity. This article focuses on Independent Administrative Authorities (Autorités administratives indépendantes) in France. We demonstrate that these institutions enjoy varying degree of independence. We find that the degree of independence varies as a function of two factors: the need to make a credible commitment in areas subject to market opening and the complexity of policy in particular areas.

Explaining the Accountability of Independent Agencies: The Importance of Political Salience

“…For instance, the statutes of telecom regulator OPTA, financial market authority AFM, and competition authority NMa all include a high number of provisions for accountability. However, the finding is not in line with the previous study of Elgie and McMenamin (2005), who demonstrate that the degree of independence of French regulatory agencies is significantly higher than the degree of independence of executive agencies.…”

“…No support was found either for Hypothesis 5, which gave expression to the suggestion of Elgie and McMenamin (2005) that credible commitments may only matter in issue areas which are politically salient. The hypothesis is tested in Model 2, using interaction terms which combine issue salience with the number of veto players, the ideological distance between them, and the regulatory nature of organizations.…”

“…In fact, the dramatic rise of regulatory agencies in the past decades is typically ascribed to this tendency. Both Gilardi (2002) and Elgie and McMenamin (2005) find that agencies which operate in sectors which have been subject to market opening and privatization are granted more political independence. As political accountability is associated with lower degrees of independence, I will test the following hypothesis:…”

The media accountability of independent regulatory agencies

“…Competition policy is a politically salient regulatory issue for electorally sensitive politicians (Elgie and McMenamin, 2005), when the functionalist logic of delegation is strong (Christensen and Yesilkagit, 2006), for which media coverage of credibility and efficiency should be particularly accurate. In addition, media coverage is examined for a commensurable period of time that is sufficiently long to avoid any potential bias because of contingent phenomena: the years 2006 and 2007.…”

Analysing constitutional reform in Britain: Insights from economic approaches

“…9 The provision of a credible commitment is not the only reason why authority might be delegated to a nonmajoritarian agency. Delegation might also take place to shield politicians from potentially unpopular policy decisions or to overcome information gathering costs by transferring these to more knowledgeable officials; see Majone, 1997;Thatcher and Stone Sweet, 2003;Elgie and McMenamin, 2005;Gilardi, 2006. 22 10 Coalition governments may increase the number of ('partisan') veto players generated by the political game; but I am primarily concerned here with ('institutional') veto players specified by the constitutional arrangements (Tsebelis, 2002: 78-9).…”