The Forum > Article Comments > Holding the 'experts' to account > Comments
Holding the 'experts' to account : Comments
By Alan Anderson, published 27/5/2005Alan Anderson argues the delegation of responsibility to administrative and expert bodies by government invites unnecessary regulation.
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Alan says we must "develop more effective mechanisms to hold [expert bodies] to democratic account"
I’d be interested to see suggestions of how this might work. “Holding to account” has sometimes been a backdoor excuse for interest groups to lobby politicians to overrule technocrats’ determination that a policy is in the national interest. For example, rural lobbies oppose free trade and the abolition of marketing authorities, and pharmacists oppose deregulation and competition in their sector. “Identity bias” means that public and politically determined decision making ,though more accountable, might actually be more vulnerable to vested interests than technocratic regulation.
(see Anne Krueger’s discssion of identity bias in the context of international trade http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2004/051804a.htm.