One of the victims of the Musk/Trump regime has been the Independence of regulators. By applying the authoritarian doctrine of the unitary executive, they are undermining any power that does not derive from the President. Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar and former Regulatory Czar under Obama, has explained it in the New York Times, as well as the political scientist Jan-Werner Mueller in The Guardian.
In the UK, the Labour government has removed the head of the Competition and Markets Authority under the argument that he wasn’t contributing enough to growth objectives. However, many authorities remain with a relatively independent regulator, and the country is even creating a new independent regulator for the football industry. The situation has a more sinistre caliber in the US, in my view.
Two former independent competition regulators, John Vickers from the UK and William Kovacic from the US, defend the benefits of regulatory Independence in an article in The Economist this week.
With several distinguished colleagues (Jon Stern, Paul Levine and Miguel A. Montoya) I did research on regulatory Independence, drawing from insights about Central Bank Independence. I summarized our findings in a 2010 paper and more recently I argued in favor of a second generation of commitment devices.
Regulators were never that independent, the Independence was never absolute. The institution relocates but does not solve the commitment problem. There’s the paradox of Independence needing a strong government (and a strong legislative majority) that has the political will to respect Independence.
The institution will not die (well, we'll see in the US), but it has to adapt to a changing world.
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