Proceduralism

We require the government to act through rules to incentivize those who currently hold power to wield it in the public interest, not against it. And even where not required to do so, every successful organization—whether a large corporation or government—will organize itself through rules and procedures in order to operate more effectively. Procedures, both formal and informal, are essential to an effective and constrained government.

Unfortunately, our current procedures impose unnecessary delays, require expensive and low-value analysis, and yet do too little to constrain abuses of power. Since the 1960s, hostile legislators have layered ever-more demanding procedural requirements on top of one another, with little concern for the accumulation of obligations or their possible redundancy. Yet some domains have been freed from even the most basic of procedural checks. It was government failure that motivated these changes. But these changes to procedure create new forms of failure, while doing little to check the old.

We can do better. Procedures can be calibrated to make it quicker and easier to execute on well-justified policy initiatives, while making it more challenging to get away with abuses of power. To accomplish this, we should eschew layers of bespoke concerns and instead have procedures which ensure that the justification for actions are reasonable. Public input requirements should be cabined to cases where they are necessary for that assurance, leaving agencies otherwise free to experiment and embrace new approaches to public input that are most useful to them. More generally, the executive should be organized to set clear policy objectives and act cohesively without burdening routine action.

Objective

Procedural rules that enable timely and effective action instead of stalling it. Government decisions that are faster, more beneficial, and less burdensome without sacrificing appropriate accountability or high-quality analysis.

Policy change

Reform core administrative procedures through cross-cutting legislation and domain-specific laws (APA, NEPA, PRA, etc.).

How we’ll get there

We will publish a series of papers that articulate high-level principles for reforms across administrative procedure. We will also regularly publish commentaries that apply these principles and dive deeper into bespoke administrative procedures and government processes.

This will culminate in proposed reform legislation. One bill will focus on interlocking cross-cutting areas of procedure. Others will focus on discrete procedures that operate largely in isolation from one another.

Model legislation

Coming soon!