Federal advisory commissions in an economic model of representative democracy.

DEMOCRACY; REPRESENTATIVE government; ECONOMIC models; EXECUTIVE advisory bodies; DECISION making; SPECIAL interest groups (Associations); LEGISLATION

This paper developed an economic theory of representative democracy to explain the use of outside advisory commissions in collective decisionmaking. In this model, legislators maximize net political support expected from supplying legislation to consumer-voters and producer voters. Outside advisory bodies were viewed as vehicles for enhancing net political .support, particularly that received from special-interest groups. By helping special-interest groups overcome the free-rider problem, advisory bodies increased the ability of special interests to provide political support in return for favorable legislation. And by providing a mechanism for safeguarding favorable legislation, advisory bodies increased the durability, and hence the value, of this legislation to the favored special interest. Thus, advisory bodies increased the ability and the willingness of special-interests to provide political support in return for favorable legislation. Implications regarding the issues to be addressed by advisory bodies and the structure of those advisory bodies were examined using a sample of federal advisory groups. These groups were classified into tour types based on the distributions of costs and benefits for issues under consideration. Differences across the four types of advisory bodies conformed largely with a priori expectations regarding the frequency with which certain types of issues were addressed as well as their composition, tenure, and size. As expected, a majority of the advisory group focused on issues where the costs were spread throughout the population but the benefits were narrowly focused, typically on members of an individual industry. Public membership on these special-interest advisory bodies was rare; in only five percent of the cases could even one public member be identified. Special-interest advisory groups with no public members were found to be more effective guardians of legislation as measured by the group's tenure and size. These groups on... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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