Accelerating Democracy

CHAPTER SEVEN

Regulation in an Age of Technological Acceleration

MODERN GOVERNMENT is largely administrative government. Congress, by legislation, delegates substantial power to executive agencies. These agencies then promulgate regulations on a wide variety of subjects, from pollution to banking, from consumer safety to pharmaceuticals. While Congress oversees and influences the content of these regulations by conducting hearings on agency performance, it rarely overturns them. Courts also defer to the decisions of agencies and overturn only those regulations that are outside the scope of Congress’s delegation or are not supported by evidence.

Administrative government though agency regulation was itself a response to technological change. The ...