ABSTRACT

Independent regulatory agency has become the standard institutional choice in Western Europe. Little is known, however, about the involvement of legislators in their design and in their monitoring. In this paper, we analyse ex-ante and ex-post legislative involvement for 48 regulatory agencies enacted in France. We show that legislators debate and design more substantially agencies for which the government bill has already granted them more powers to appoint members to their board, or to be appointed as board members themselves. Once enacted, agencies that allow greater participation by legislators in their decision-making are subject to greater scrutiny, and this even after controlling for routine oversight activities. Regulatory domains matter, though only for ex-post legislative oversight. These results suggest that legislative involvement is selective and driven by strategic considerations. More fundamentally, they imply that legislative involvement could be more important in regulatory agency activities than usually assumed.

摘要

独立监管机构已成为西欧的标准机构选择。然而，人们对立法者参与其设计和监督的情况知之甚少。在本文中，我们分析了法国 48 个监管机构的事前和事后立法参与情况。我们表明，立法者辩论和设计了更实质性的机构，政府法案已经赋予他们更多的权力来任命董事会成员，或者自己被任命为董事会成员。一旦颁布，允许立法者更多地参与决策的机构将受到更严格的审查，即使在控制常规监督活动之后也是如此。监管领域很重要，但仅限于事后立法监督。这些结果表明，立法参与是有选择性的，并受到战略考虑的驱动。更根本的是，它们意味着立法参与在监管机构活动中可能比通常假设的更为重要。