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"Have bureaucrats taken over the decision making role of politicians? This book offers a direct assessment of the role of bureaucrats in policy making by analysing how they shape policy in making decrees - laws that generally do not pass through full legislative scrutiny. These are often described as "secondary legislation" and are known by a variety of names (including decrets, arretes, administrative regulations, Verordnungen, statutory instruments). Such decrees offer an important vantage point for understanding bureaucratic power not only because they account for a large proportion of policy making activity within the executive, but also because they are made largely away from the glare of publicity. If bureaucrats have strong policy making powers and use them in a way that minimises political involvement in policy making, we would expect to find these powers especially evident in this "everyday" decision making. The book is based on research examining 52 decrees produced between 2005 and 2008 in six jurisdictions: France, the UK, Germany, Sweden, the United States and the European Union. The comparative perspective allows one to see how far different patterns of bureaucratic involvement in policy making are characteristic of particular political systems and how far they are a general feature of modern bureaucracies. The book asks three main questions about how these decrees are produced: when do politicians become involved in making them? What happens when politicians become involved? And what happens when they are not involved? The answers to these questions are provided by examination of primary source material as well as interviews with over 100 officials."--Publisher's website

A comparative study of the everday policy-making role of bureaucrats in six jurisdictions: France, US, Germany, Sweden the EU, and the UK. It takes as its central focus the decrees and regulations that account for a large proportion of government activity and explores the role of civil servants in their production

Machine generated contents note: Chapter 1: Politics in Seclusion 1 -- But is it politics? 1 -- It's politics, but not as we know it 3 -- The character of secluded politics 7 -- Moving out of seclusion 14 -- Illuminating the obscurity 15 -- Chapter 2: Examining the Instrument 19 -- What are Statutory Instruments? 20 -- Not new, but increasingly important 21 -- How Sis are made: the formalities 25 -- Courts and delegated legislation 27 -- Conclusions 31 -- Chapter 3: The stuff of everyday politics 35 -- Reading the labels 38 -- Subjects covered and ministries concerned 45 -- Political action and SIs 48 -- High politics, low politics and SIs 49 -- How much of political importance is involved in delegated 52 -- legislation? -- Chapter 4: The origins of regulations 55 -- Different types of SI 56 -- Where do the initiatives come from? 66 -- Conclusions 81 -- Chapter 5: Ministers on Top 83 -- What gets referred to ministers and when 83 -- Delegated legislation: the domain of the junior minister 87 -- The nature of ministerial involvement 89 -- The muffled impact of parties 95 -- Conclusions 100 -- Chapter 6: Drafting SIs: the joint effort of administrators and lawyers 103 -- Administrators' roles 104 -- Lawyers' roles 114 -- Conclusions 126 -- Chapter 7: Consulting outside interests 129 -- Contrasting consultative processes 130 -- Is consultation inclusive? 140 -- Responding to consultations 143 -- Conclusions 153 -- Chapter 8: The discreet impact of parliamentary scrutiny 157 -- The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments 158 -- Scrutiny of policy 168 -- Assessing the impact of Parliament 172 -- Conclusions 174 -- Chapter 9: Everyday politics and high politics 177 -- Understanding everyday government 179 -- Forms of bias 184 -- The relationship between everyday and high politics 186 -- Governing in a nether world 190 -- Appendix A: The Medicines (Control of Substances for 195 -- Manufacture) (Revocation) Order 1997 -- Appendix B: Analysis of SIs on CD-ROM 199 -- Appendix C: SIs examined in detail in Chapter 3 201 -- Appendix D: Selection of 46 SIs for detailed case studies 213 -- Appendix E: Survey of interest groups 217 -- List of SIs cited in text 223 -- Bibliography 231 -- Index 235

A study of the legal and political basis of relationships between national and local government in Britain, France Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Spain. The author examines the differences between these countries and their implications for patterns of policy-making at local level

This article focuses on the normative problem of establishing how the burdens associated with implementing policies designed to prevent, or manage, climate change should be shared amongst states involved in ongoing international climate change negotiations. This problem has three key features: identifying the nature and extent of the burdens that need to be borne; identifying the type of agent that should be allocated these burdens; and distributing amongst the particular 'tokens' of the relevant 'agent type' climatic burdens according to principles that none could reasonably reject. The article defends a key role in climatic burden-sharing policy for the principle that states benefiting most from activities that cause climate change should bear the greatest burden in terms of the costs of preventing dangerous climate change. I outline two versions of this 'beneficiary pays' principle; examine the strengths and weakness of each version; and explore how the most plausible version (which I call the 'unjust enrichment' principle) could be operationalized in the context of global climate governance.