Measuring the Democratic Qualities of Regulatory Agencies ꟷ Index Development and Illustration

The delegation of regulatory tasks to specialized administrations, run by unelected experts, became a global governance best practice since at least the 1990s. However, the delegation itself, and the rise of decentralized administrative governance, is controversial in terms of democratic legitimacy. At the center of this study stands the regulatory agency, which is often accused as exhibiting a democratic deficit due to its independence and detachment from elected representatives. However, there is a growing group of studies that claim the opposite, that regulatory agencies in fact enhance democracy by improving participatory channels and accountability mechanisms. Therefore, it is argued here that the compatibility of regulatory agencies with democratic values, and the implications of their autonomy on democratic governance norms is currently unclear. Up to date, no organization or scholar has developed a comprehensive measure of procedural mechanisms that are intended to enhance democratic quality in RAs. Thus, the concept of democratic qualities of RAs is offered in the attempt to develop the notion of the compatibility of democracy with bureaucracy and with RAs particularly and to move toward a comparative research design. The paper will be structured as followed: the first part of the paper will address the challenges of administrative governance in democratic settings, i.e, the democratic criteria for the evaluation of bureaucracies and regulatory agencies. Then, it will present an index for measuring three central democratic procedures: Transparency, public and stakeholder participation and political accountability. Finally, the third part will apply the index on several illustrative cases.