HANDBOOK OF REGULATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW by David H. Rosenbloom and Richard D. Schwartz (Editors). New York: Marcel Dekker, 1994. 585 pp. Cloth $175.00.

Reviewed by Cary Coglianese, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The title of this book hardly invites attention. For some, it may even engender a gut-level aversion, conjuring up an image of a book filled with dense regulations describing the minutiae of stair-railing heights or federally-approved procedures for cleaning fish. Such an initial reaction, while perhaps understandable, would be misguided. The HANDBOOK OF REGULATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW is not a handbook of regulations themselves, but rather a rich collection of essays on administrative law and the regulatory process written by leading scholars in law, public management, and political science. By bringing together in one volume a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, David Rosenbloom and Richard Schwartz have created a useful reference source for law and politics scholars. The volume itself does not attempt any major synthesis of its contributors' varied disciplines; however, the HANDBOOK does provide readers with material for making their own assessment and integration of existing research on regulation and administrative law.

The HANDBOOK comes at a time of growing recognition of a need to reinvigorate the study of administrative law. Rosenbloom and Schwartz specifically address the need to integrate legal analysis with managerial and political analysis, noting that for too long these analytic modes have "progressed along separate tracks in their treatments of regulation and administrative law" (p. iii). Through the HANDBOOK, Rosenbloom and Schwartz seek "to forge a much stronger and more comprehensive link between administrative and legal analysis" (p. iii). This is both a timely and worthwhile goal. Timely, because the regulatory process currently enjoys a prominent place on the national policy agenda, thanks both to the Contract with America and the National Performance Review. Worthwhile, because scholarly segregation on regulatory issues risks our dealing inadequately with some of the more valuable research questions, such as those which investigate (rather than postulate) relationships between policy analysis, judicial review, and agency behavior. In addition, continued disciplinary separation creates pedagogical limits, preparing students at best incompletely for a world where problems seldom come neatly labeled as legal, managerial, or political.

In seeking to bridge what might be called the regulation disciplines, Rosenbloom and Schwartz set themselves a goal whose importance is rivaled only by its challenge. Any truly interdisciplinary pursuit is a bit like bushwhacking through the wilderness, traversing different disciplinary paths to reach new, undiscovered locations. Yet when dealing with the regulation disciplines, the going gets still tougher because even the disciplinary paths are obscure. As a body of law, for example, administrative law has long struggled for coherence. It fits uncomfortably at the level of both constitutional and statutory law, and its principles and rules vary nearly as much as do the agencies that they ostensibly govern. Organizational variation within and across bureaucracies similarly makes theoretical coherence a scarce commodity in
 

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the social sciences. One of the most widely-acclaimed organizational studies on bureaucracy, for example, begins by explicitly doubting the possibility of a general theory of how bureaucracies work (Wilson 1989). The task of integrating the regulation disciplines at this time may well be so daunting that no single collection of essays could reasonably be expected to take us but a step or two in any useful direction.

In this context, the HANDBOOK OF REGULATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW makes an important contribution by bringing together twenty original (or substantially revised) essays written by some of the leading scholars in the regulation disciplines. Individually, the essays make quite varied contributions. Some review the history of the administrative state (see, e.g., chapters by Marc Allen Eisner, Samuel Krislov, David Rosenbloom); others analyze research topics ranging from enforcement to rulemaking to discretion (Robert Kagan, Cornelius Kerwin, Martin Shapiro). Some essays report findings from empirical research (Robert Katzmann, Richard Schwartz), while others report comprehensive literature reviews (Paul Teske, Kenneth Warren). Collectively somewhat of a pastiche, the HANDBOOK's set of essays does give readers an opportunity to draw linkages between the regulation disciplines.

A few of the essays better serve an internal audience of practitioners in the public sector. Charles Wise, for example, reviews contemporary takings law so that public managers can better understand constitutional decision-making by the courts. Rosemary O'Leary explicitly offers practical guidance in her essay entitled "What Every Administrator Should Know About Environmental Law." Most of the essays, though, aim at an external audience of social scientists and legal scholars. For example, Paul Teske contributes a first-rate review of the political science literature on state regulatory agencies; John Scholz and Robert Kagan contribute incisive analyses of social science research on regulatory enforcement; and Bernard Schwartz surveys statutory interpretation issues confronting administrative law scholars today. As these examples suggest, the HANDBOOK OF REGULATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW sweeps broadly, touching at some level on almost every subject related to regulatory law and politics.

The essays in the HANDBOOK generate a reasonably straightforward account of how the various disciplines have approached regulatory issues. As a general rule, regulation disciplines tend to view administrative law as an external constraint imposed on agencies, which in turn affects both organizational behavior and outcomes in the world. Law, behavior, and outcomes interact at least roughly in a causal way. Administrative law affects the behavior of agencies, and agency behavior influences (effectively or otherwise) outcomes on various dimensions of regulatory concern, such as safety and health, consumer protection, and economic efficiency. The connections between law, agency behavior, and regulatory outcomes do not find themselves identified explicitly in these terms in the HANDBOOK, nor perhaps anywhere else as far as I know. Yet these linkages do emerge from the HANDBOOK's essays as a useful, albeit somewhat simplistic, paradigm

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for identifying divisions between the regulation disciplines and for locating possibilities for research that cuts across domains.

Most existing research focuses individually on law, agency behavior, or regulatory outcomes, targeting one link at a time and treating the others as proverbial "black boxes." What distinguishes the HANDBOOK OF REGULATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW from other recently published collections on administrative law (Schuck 1994, Sargentich 1994) is that it pays considerably more attention to all three links in the same volume. A few of the essays in the HANDBOOK, in particular those by Robert Kagan and Martin Shapiro, even provide concrete suggestions for integrating research across traditional boundaries. In this way, the HANDBOOK's editors rightly urge scholars to study law and regulatory politics as intertwined with each other. Their book makes a valuable resource for those seeking to develop a synthesis of law, agency behavior, and regulatory outcomes, even if it does not achieve that synthesis itself.

REFERENCES

Sargentich, Thomas O. 1994. ADMINISTRATIVE LAW ANTHOLOGY. Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson.

Schuck, Peter H. 1994. FOUNDATIONS OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, James Q. 1989. BUREAUCRACY: WHAT GOVERNMENT AGENCIES DO AND WHY THEY DO IT. New York: Basic Books.