Political Control of Regulatory Agency: Theoretical Development and Related Literatures

管制機構的政治控管：理論發展與相關文獻回顧

葉一璋(I-Jan Yeh) ； 潘競恆(Ching-Heng Pan) ； 張其祿(Chyi-Lu Jang)

《中國行政評論》 15卷3期 (2006/06) Pp. 17-62

https://doi.org/10.6635/cpar.2006.15(3).02

摘要

管制政策往往受到相關利益團體的顯著性影響，甚至管制政策的主管機構已完全被這些利益團體所宰制，形成管制者被被管制者所綁架的情況，亦即著名的「管制俘虜」現象。因此在民主體制中，一項極重要的課題便是對管制機構進行政治的監督與控制，以使管制機構能忠實地執行議會或人民所囑託的職責，並防止管制俘虜問題的發生。不過，由於管制機構的政治控管向來具有複雜的概念及內涵，所以已出現許多競爭性的理論架構，紛紛投入對此一委託代理課題的分析與討論。本文因此具有三個主要目的：第一、提供該等相關理論的當前發展情形與文獻回顧；第二、將相關文獻中的主要競爭觀點加以釐清與對比分析；第三、審視近期被普便採用的理論途徑，例如交易成本政治學與代理人理論，並就其對瞭解管制機構政治控管的貢獻與限制進行評估。
透過文獻回顧與調查方式，本文將對管制機構政治控管的相關課題進行系統性的比較分析。本文首先檢閱以交易成本經濟學、委託代理理論，或新制度經濟學等為基礎的管制機構政治控管觀點，並企圖瞭解為何這些類似的概念架構卻往往衍生出分歧性的結論。本文其次將對相關競爭觀點作一整合性分析，以探索制度對政治控管的真正影響，並克服傳統理論架構解釋分歧的限制。本文結論發現，交易成本對管制機構受政治控管的程度具有關鍵性的影響，而政治監督機構也會藉由制度結構設計、行政程序規範或特許授權等策略方式來彌補其在委代關係中的資訊劣勢情況，並避免管制行政機構的脫韁行為。

關鍵字

政治控管 ； 管制俘虜 ； 國會主宰 ； 官僚自主 ； 官僚脫韁 ； 交易成本政治學

並列摘要

Interest group influence over policymaking is a pervasive feature of regulatory agency. Such influence is so ubiquitous that the capture theory of regulation is the most frequently invoked theory to explain regulatory behavior. Consequently, the fundamental problem faced by democratic politics is the political control of regulatory agency. Since the nature of political control is hard to characterize and therefore has been conceptualized in quite different ways, there exist competing literatures aimed at characterizing the relationship between regulatory agencies and their political principals. Our objective in this paper is to: (1) provide an overview and theoretical developments of these literatures, (2) examine a series of basic concepts from these literatures, and (3) review recent contributions and in particular examine how transaction-cost politics and principal-agent approaches have provided theoretical advances.
In reviewing the theoretical development of related literatures, our emphases are on the reasons why the same theoretical framework, be it called the transaction cost economics, principal-agent theory, or NIE (Neo-institutional Economics), is used to arrive at divergent perspectives on the political control of regulatory agency, which as a result underlines the difficulties inherent in understanding the nature of political governance. As such, we provide a recent development of more coherent body of literatures that take into account the distinctiveness of political institution and transaction so as to set a research agenda different from that of the interpretive tradition. We conclude that the impact of transaction cost on the institutions for control is paramount because political actors can strategically design structure, procedures, and norm in order to mitigate their informational disadvantages and to enfranchise important constituencies into the regulatory process, thereby increasing the likelihood of obtaining desired policy outcomes from the agency.

並列關鍵字

Political Control ； Regulatory Capture ； Congressional Dominance ； Agency Autonomy ； Bureaucratic Drift ； Transaction-cost Politics