Rational Fictions: Central Bank Independence and the Social Logic of Delegation

Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Majone and Moravcsik

“…Even though a majority of economists and political scientists believe that central banks and competition regulators should be independent from majoritarian institutions, these views are not universally held (e.g. McNamara, 2002). And there may be reasons for immediate action that outweigh the loss in trustworthiness: trade-offs that may best be handled by majoritarian, political accountable, agents.…”

Comparison of Central Bank and Judicial Independence

“…In this case the pursuit of price stability may privilege some citizens against others and CBI may be considered as a mechanism which is not independent of specific economic interests. As already mentioned, this observation led Posen (1993) to suggest that the financial sector which benefits from price stability will press the government for CBI (see also McNamara, 2002).…”

Epistemic communities and two goals of delegation: hormone growth promoters in the European Union

“…As experts already established in the field, the Lamming's evolutionary epistemic community had by far the greater independence from political bias of the two groups. The reason that this agent's independence failed to deliver policy credibility is only illuminated by looking beyond the orthodox account of policy credibility toward a social account of credibility (McNamara, 2002). The view expressed here is that a social logic can underpin how agents are designed and operate.…”

“…This paper examines the orthodox thesis which links policy credibility to agent autonomy: a view that is increasingly actualised in the proliferation of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) (Gilardi, 2002;Maggetti, 2007;van Thiel, 2004). Analysis suggests that explanations which articulate a 'social logic' (McNamara, 2002) for credibility by emphasising the importance of social legitimisation in delegation design and in the type of agent independence which prevails, require further attention.…”