9
to mere public opinion is that it is relatively stable and enduring. Legal
doctrines and even more, legal processes are supposed to be stable so that
individuals and companies can have some certainty about their legal
position. Institutions are also by definition enduring. Indeed, as Moe has
argued, the purpose of institutional design is often to lock policies into place
by making change difficult, even impossible.
17
Pressures for Change
While political scientists tend to stress continuity (perhaps, thereby
providing a useful corrective to journalists who stress change), events in the
“real world” did seem to illustrate powerful pressures for change. There
were several obvious pressures for change evident in regulatory policy.
First, there were endogenous pressures for change in regulatory
communities. As Kettl et al. argued
18
, there was a growing feeling among
experts on regulation that established approaches had reached the limits of
their potential to achieve results such as higher levels of environmental
quality. In a well worn metaphor, the low hanging fruit were said to have
been picked through traditional command and control regulations. There
were several aspects to this argument. It was widely believed that command
and control regulations were said to have reached the point of rapidly
diminishing returns and rapidly increasing costs. Simply ratcheting up
requirements on emissions from smokestacks or discharge pipes would
result in very modest gains but at very high costs. In contrast, however,
significant environmental improvements might be attained by firms that
17
Terry Moe “The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure” in Can the Government Govern?
ed. John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1989.)
Convention