Public revision capacity deserves protection, but its institutions must justify their costs, limits and effects on prosperity.
My illustration entitled: “The City With Two Clocks” – Two great clocks overlook a flourishing city: one marks the long horizons needed for investment, the other scheduled opportunities for public review. Engineers connect their mechanisms without stopping either. Predictable review can reconcile investment confidence with public authorship.
The objection deserves a direct answer
Could requiring successful institutions to support their own possible revision damage investment and stability? Yes. A badly designed Reauthorist arrangement could make profitable activity less attractive, raise prices, multiply administrative offices and expose long-term projects to political interference. A philosophy concerned with public authority must take responsibility for those possibilities.
Reauthorism proposes that essential economic arrangements sustain affected publics’ independently governed knowledge, resources and practical capacity to reconsider institutional purposes and structures. The Reauthorial Dividend would help finance that capacity, rather than necessarily distribute cash. The Successor Duty would preserve the obligation through changes of ownership or organisational form.
I defend the underlying concern: receiving benefits does not necessarily give people meaningful authority over the arrangements producing them. But that concern does not establish that every participation scheme or revision fund is worthwhile. Public authorship would be poorly served by institutions that consume resources, exclude ordinary participants and weaken the essential services on which people depend.
Success should therefore matter to the assessment. Reliable services and sound investment are reasons to proceed carefully. They are not conclusive reasons to extinguish future reconsideration. The challenge is to preserve that possibility through arrangements whose burdens can themselves withstand scrutiny.
Investment responds before intervention occurs
The strongest investment objection concerns expectations. An investor deciding whether to finance infrastructure must anticipate future returns and obligations. A promise that revision is merely possible may provide little reassurance if future authorities can redefine the contribution, reopen commitments or threaten compulsory transfers once investment is sunk.
Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck’s Investment under Uncertainty explains the significance of irreversible commitments and the option to wait for information. [1] Their theory does not measure Reauthorism’s effects. It supplies a serious reason to investigate whether a proposed implementation increases uncertainty enough to delay useful investment.
Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott’s work on time inconsistency likewise shows why evaluating policy cannot ignore how people respond to anticipated future decisions. [2] My application is that the authority to revise and the credibility of commitments must be considered together. Public discretion exercised after investment can alter incentives before investment.
A predictable regime could conceivably reduce uncertainty by specifying review procedures and obligations in advance. That is an empirical hypothesis, not an automatic defence. A transparent rule can still be excessively costly, and a scheduled review can still frighten investors if its permissible outcomes are effectively unlimited.
Maintaining capacity and exercising it both cost money
I distinguish the cost of maintaining revision capacity from the cost of restructuring an institution. The first includes independent expertise, usable information, participation support, records and transition preparation. The second can include replacement systems, retraining, financing changes, compensation where justified and temporary disruption.
Maintaining capacity does not require undertaking every change it makes conceivable. An informed public could deliberately continue a successful arrangement. Yet standing capacity is not free: money spent on evaluation cannot simultaneously fund maintenance, wages or lower charges. Participation also takes time, while compliance can divert skilled staff from operational work.
Nor does postponing restructuring remove its expected cost. Investors may price the prospect into financing terms; workers may fear displacement; consumers may worry about continuity. A credible assessment should consider these responses without assuming that every asserted cost is accurate. The distinction clarifies which decision requires justification. It does not make either decision economically harmless.
A limiting principle based on dependence
I would reserve stronger obligations for arrangements whose disruption, exclusion or concentrated authority can seriously impair basic living conditions or economic participation. Essentiality concerns consequences, rather than prestige or size. Dependence concerns whether affected people possess realistic alternatives, including the ability to obtain comparable services without prohibitive costs or risks.
Institutional concentration strengthens the case for scrutiny where control over knowledge, infrastructure or entry limits those alternatives. But concentration alone does not establish the remedy. The question remains what additional revision capacity is missing, what benefits a proposed measure could plausibly deliver and whether less costly arrangements could achieve them.
This approach has established policy predecessors. The OECD’s 2012 recommendation on regulatory governance calls for proportionate assessment, consideration of alternatives and attention to who receives benefits and bears costs. [3] Reauthorism does not invent those disciplines; its proposed focus is continuing public capacity to reconsider essential arrangements, including successful ones.
My limiting principle is qualitative, not a scientifically validated formula. Stronger dependence creates a stronger reason to investigate safeguards, while higher administrative costs and weaker expected benefits count against a particular intervention. The distribution of burdens matters throughout: an aggregate gain cannot alone justify imposing severe costs on people least able to bear them.
The baseline must include existing shareholder rights, collective bargaining, elections, regulators and courts where applicable. Proponents should explain what these arrangements cannot adequately provide, rather than demand that critics prove them perfect. Some benefits of public agency resist monetary valuation, but that does not exempt a proposal from comparison. A defensible judgment should state which values justify which burdens, acknowledge uncertainty and identify who has legitimate authority to decide. Reauthorism supplies an argument for attention to authorship, not a presumption that its preferred machinery always wins.
A hypothetical comparison: flowers and water
Consider a hypothetical optional flower-delivery subscription operating among many accessible competitors. Customers can cancel easily, use another florist or stop buying flowers. Assume its operations create no unusual concentration of economic dependence. Requiring it to finance a permanent public revision council would be difficult to justify. Ordinary consumer, employment, competition and environmental safeguards may address the relevant problems more proportionately.
Now consider a hypothetical regional drinking-water network whose users cannot realistically switch systems. Its infrastructure requires substantial investment, while operational knowledge is concentrated within the operator. Reliable supply and reasonable charges make it successful. They do not establish that communities can independently assess investment priorities, tariff principles or future governance arrangements.
These services should not face identical obligations. The water system presents a stronger case for independent expertise, accessible evidence and workable review. Nevertheless, if an existing regulator and representative institutions already provide those capacities effectively, creating another fund could add little. Dependence justifies examining the gap; it does not prove that a new organisation must fill it.
The comparison depends on its assumptions. Workers’ dependence or harms to neighbours could complicate the flower business’s position. The relevant inquiry concerns actual relationships and available safeguards, rather than a permanent exemption or obligation attached to a sector’s name.
My illustration “The City With Two Clocks” work-in-progress. The art represents that predictable opportunities for public revision can align long-term investment with people’s continuing authority to shape the systems they depend on.
Predictability without permanent immunity
For the water system, I would favour published review intervals, clearly allocated decision-making authority and stated grounds for exceptional examination. A review should specify which questions it can address, what evidence is required and how affected people can challenge exclusion. Participation should connect to decisions without giving each participant an unlimited veto.
Legitimate commitments deserve protection. Proposed obligations should normally be made clear before new investments or contracts are agreed. Changes affecting existing arrangements require lawful authority, notice, consideration of reliance and independent avenues of challenge. Compensation may be appropriate in particular circumstances; neither universal compensation nor automatic confiscation follows from public authorship.
Reasonable transition periods should reflect technical conditions and the time required to train staff, secure finance and preserve service. Staged implementation and fallback arrangements may lower risk. Conversely, documented imminent harm can require faster action. Predictability means explaining exceptional powers and their limits in advance, rather than promising that circumstances can never change.
The Successor Duty should also be specified clearly enough for potential purchasers to assess its consequences. Preserving comparable revision capacity does not require retaining every committee or administrator. Future arrangements should be able to change the mechanism through accountable procedures, while incumbents cannot abolish the public function unilaterally.
The revision bureaucracy can become the problem
The critic’s administrative objection is substantial. A revision fund could develop its own interest in larger budgets and permanent relevance. Experts might commission familiar colleagues, parties might reward allies and organised groups might dominate meetings. Staff could produce elaborate reports whose practical effect is to make participation accessible only through professional intermediaries.
The collection edited by Daniel Carpenter and David Moss, Preventing Regulatory Capture, argues for diagnosing capture carefully rather than assuming it is inevitable. [4] I would apply the same discipline to Reauthorist bodies. Declaring them independent does not establish that their agendas, appointments or funding decisions remain open to challenge.
Published allocation rules, conflict management, independent audit and workable replacement procedures could reduce risks. They also cost money and can fail. Shared expertise, existing ombudsman services or improvements to an established regulator may be preferable to a dedicated institution. A contribution should reflect justified tasks and resources, not expand automatically because returns increase.
Consumers must remain visible in this accounting. Depending on market conditions and funding rules, costs might reduce investor returns, affect wages, raise bills or absorb public revenue. None of those outcomes should be presumed away. A fund advertised as paid by prosperity may still burden households that cannot afford higher essential-service charges.
When I would reject, reduce or defer intervention
I would reject a proposal that identifies no material gap in existing revision capacity, creates unchecked powers over legitimate interests or depends on excluding vulnerable groups. I would also reject an administratively expensive fund where credible analysis shows that less costly safeguards can provide comparable capacity. Philosophical enthusiasm cannot substitute for an account of additional value.
I would reduce obligations where standard documentation, pooled technical advice or strengthening existing representation addresses the demonstrated need. A small operator should not automatically face the same reporting machinery as a complex network. Mandatory consultation should also have a clear purpose: the OECD’s 2022 participation guidelines warn against processes without scope for meaningful public contribution. [5]
I would defer restructuring where continuity plans are inadequate, important costs remain unresolved or a short delay enables essential preparation. Deferral should identify necessary work, responsible institutions and a review date. Otherwise, stability becomes an indefinite excuse. Protecting an immediate service and preserving the capacity for later reconsideration can proceed together.
What evidence could change the argument?
The normative claim is that people seriously dependent on essential arrangements have reasons to seek meaningful authority over their future. The empirical claims concern whether particular mechanisms improve that authority, what they cost and how they affect investment, prices and service quality. These are distinct claims. Valuing agency cannot establish that a chosen fund produces it.
Evidence would weaken an implementation’s case if participation remained concentrated among well-resourced groups, independent investigations were repeatedly blocked or proposals could not reach consequential decisions. More meetings and higher expenditure would not rescue that record. If existing arrangements achieved comparable agency at lower cost, the additional machinery would need reconsideration.
Economic claims would also need testing. Persistent investment delays, higher financing costs, reduced service quality or disproportionate burdens on low-income users would count against an implementation, once alternative explanations were examined. Comparative cases, phased introductions where practicable and observation over time could help. Neither a single failed project nor a prosperous year would establish causation.
I cannot promise costless revisability. My argument is that successful essential systems should preserve proportionate capacity for public reconsideration, while the mechanisms supporting it remain accountable to evidence and legitimate expectations. Reauthorism would punish success if it treated prosperity as permission for arbitrary intervention. It can avoid that error only by making its own obligations predictable, limited and revisable.
Sources
- Avinash K. Dixit and Robert S. Pindyck, Investment under Uncertainty. Princeton University Press, 30 January 1994.
- Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott, “Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans”. Journal of Political Economy 85(3), 1 June 1977, pp. 473–491.
- OECD, Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance. OECD Publishing, 2 November 2012. See particularly the provisions on proportionate impact assessment, alternatives and distributional effects.
- Daniel Carpenter and David A. Moss, editors, Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It. Cambridge University Press, print publication 21 October 2013; online publication 5 June 2014.
- OECD, OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes. OECD Publishing, 24 September 2022.