Allocate tasks to politicians when values matter; to bureaucrats when expertise matters.
Monetary policy sits with technocrats because it is mainly an expertise problem; abortion law sits with legislatures because it is mainly a values problem. Confusing the two produces either incompetence or illegitimacy.
In practice
- Interest rates are set by a technocratic committee; what counts as a marriage is set by a legislature. Swapping them would produce either incompetence or illegitimacy.
- A safety threshold is a technical question; how many deaths are acceptable to avoid a cost is not, and agencies that blur the two are attacked from both sides.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works