法律翻译｜《哈佛法律评论》第129卷第2期目录+摘要

作者：Jennifer Nou

原文链接：https://harvardlawreview.org/category/articles/

Conventional accounts portray agency design as the outcome of congressional and presidential quests for political control. This perspective aligns with administrative law’s preoccupation with agencies’ external constraints. The main unit of analysis from this point of view is the agency, and the central question is how political principals outside of the agency restrain it. In reality, however, agency actors must also abide by controls internal to the agency: how do these mechanisms arise and what explains their design? For their part, legislative and executive specifications invariably leave organizational slack. Agency heads thus possess substantial discretion to impose internal structures and processes to further their own interests. By and large, however, agency heads have been neglected as important determinants of institutional design. Indeed, like the need for interagency coordination, the bureaucracy requires intra-agency coordination.

常规解释将机构设计描述为国会和总统寻求政治控制的结果（注：本篇的agency应当是指federal agency，即联邦政府的分支机构）。这一观点与行政法对机构外部约束的关注相一致。该角度分析的主要单位是机构，而核心问题是机构之外的政治主体如何约束机构本身。然而，在现实中，机构成员也必须遵守机构内部的控制：这些机制是如何产生的，如何解释它们的设计？就此而言，立法和行政规范总是会留下组织上的空白。因此，机构负责人拥有大量的自由裁量权，可以强行制定内部结构和推行内部程序，以促进自身利益。然而，总体而言，机构负责人作为机构设计的重要决定因素（这一事实）被忽视了。实际上，就像机构间需要协调一样，政府机构也要求机构内部的协调。

This Article seeks to provide a general account of how agency heads, distinct from Congress or the President, manage and operate their organizational divisions. It presents a theory of how administrative leaders use internal hierarchies and procedures to process information in light of their individual preferences and exogenous uncertainties. In doing so, this Article offers a conceptual framework to analyze agency design problems as well as to explain variations in bureaucratic form. Armed with these insights, the analysis then considers some of the resulting normative implications for political and legal oversight. It concludes by suggesting various reforms such as the judicially enforceable disclosure of agencies’ internal rule-drafting processes, as well as doctrines further designed to foster transparency and accountability.

本文试图对有别于国会或总统的机构负责人如何管理和运营其组织部门提供一个概括说明。本文提出了一个理论，说明行政领导如何根据个人偏好和外部不确定性来利用内部层级和程序来处理信息。在此过程中，本文提供了一个概念框架来分析机构设计的问题，并解释政府机构形式的变化。基于这些认识，本文分析了其对政治和法律监督产生的一些规范性影响。文章最后提出了各种改革建议，如对机构内部规则起草过程的司法强制披露，以及旨在进一步提升透明度和促进问责制的理论。