Why institutions that enable public authorship must remain open to scrutiny, challenge and replacement.
My illustration entitled: “The Watchtower With Windows on Every Side” – citizens oversee a flourishing city from a great watchtower whose transparent walls also let the public observe them. Those who scrutinise power must remain open to scrutiny themselves.
The danger inside the remedy
I propose Reauthorism because receiving an essential service does not necessarily give people meaningful authority over its future. An electricity system can deliver reliable power while leaving its users, workers and neighbouring communities unable to investigate alternatives or reconsider its purposes. Public authorship requires knowledge, resources and practical capacity to pursue that reconsideration, including when the system succeeds.
I use essential arrangements to mean systems whose interruption, exclusionary rules or concentrated control can seriously impair basic living conditions and economic participation, especially where alternatives are weak. Their affected publics include those substantially exposed to their decisions and harms. The case for supported revision grows with that dependence; it does not make every enterprise subject to unrestricted public direction.
But the remedy creates a further concentration of power. Whoever selects the experts, distributes participation funds and decides which proposals deserve examination can shape the future before any public decision occurs. The institution established to make revision possible can become the institution that determines which revisions are imaginable.
This is an internal challenge to Reauthorism. A Reauthorial Dividend, understood as a contribution towards independent expertise, participation and transition capacity, could finance a new professional establishment. The Successor Duty, which would preserve revision capacity through institutional change, could be misused to defend that establishment’s permanence. Calling its members independent settles neither problem.
Independence must remain answerable
By capture, I mean a persistent diversion of an institution’s agenda, resources or procedures towards particular interests, accompanied by weakened opportunities for affected people to contest that diversion. Disagreement with a decision is insufficient evidence. Experts can reach unwelcome conclusions honestly; organised groups can advance legitimate claims. An accusation needs evidence of influence and exclusion, and consideration of alternative explanations.
The collection edited by Daniel Carpenter and David Moss, Preventing Regulatory Capture, cautions against treating capture as an inevitable or indiscriminate explanation of regulation. Its emphasis on diagnosis matters here: safeguards should respond to identifiable mechanisms rather than suspicion alone. [1] The OECD’s 2017 study similarly treats capture as a problem requiring complementary measures, including diverse engagement, transparency, accountability and institutional integrity. [2]
Institutional independence should protect a revision body against unilateral control by the service operator, a governing party or a funder. It should not protect that body against questions about its own conduct. Mark Bovens’s account of accountability supplies a useful distinction: an accountable actor must give reasons to a forum capable of questioning and judging its conduct, with consequences possible. Publishing an annual report alone does not establish that relationship. [3]
A hypothetical trust that narrows the future
Consider a hypothetical Regional Electricity Revision Trust. A predictable contribution from the electricity system finances independent studies, participation support and preparation for possible institutional transitions. The trust does not operate the grid. It helps affected publics examine questions such as investment priorities, tariff principles and ownership arrangements, with decisions reserved to the appropriate public authorities and procedures.
Its board includes residents, workers and technical specialists. Meetings are published; members declare interests; accounts receive an external audit. Nevertheless, capture develops. The operator supplies most usable data and recommends consultants familiar with its systems. The governing party appoints apparently independent allies. Specialists admit only proposals compatible with their preferred planning models.
Well-organised business associations and homeowners attend repeatedly. Shift workers, tenants and people struggling with energy bills rarely do. Communities affected by infrastructure but outside the service area receive no invitation. Meanwhile, fund administrators require elaborate applications and favour established organisations that employ familiar consultants. Administrative continuity becomes their reason for postponing changes to these rules.
Every safeguard still appears intact. Meetings are public but difficult to follow. Conflicts are disclosed without affecting assignments. The audit confirms that spending was authorised, while asking nothing about excluded questions. New board members rotate into office and depend heavily on the permanent secretariat. No bribery is necessary for the trust to become a gatekeeper.
Representation needs more than an invitation
I would begin with plural routes into representation. Open nominations, worker elections and a stratified lottery among affected residents could complement one another. Selection criteria, appointing authorities and reasons for appointments should be public. Neither party nomination nor membership of a recognised association should confer an exclusive claim to speak for everyone in a category.
The relevant public also extends beyond current customers. People exposed to infrastructure harms need a route to representation, with standing related to the seriousness of their exposure. Minority participants need opportunities to place issues on the agenda, obtain reasons and record dissent. These protections need not give every person a veto over collective decisions.
Archon Fung’s work on participation distinguishes who participates, how participants communicate and decide, and how their deliberations connect to public action. This helps expose why a crowded meeting can still produce little authority. [4] In the trust, participants should know whether they are advising, commissioning an investigation or exercising a defined decision-making power. Authorities rejecting recommendations should explain why.
Participation also costs time. Compensation, childcare, interpretation, accessible formats and meetings outside conventional office hours can reduce unequal access. They cannot eliminate it. Recruitment should therefore examine who remains absent, rather than treating attendance as proof of inclusion. Support should enable disagreement with the trust, including challenges to its funding decisions.
My illustration “The Watchtower With Windows on Every Side” work-in-progress. The art represents that those entrusted to scrutinise power must themselves remain visible, accountable and open to challenge by the public they serve.
Expertise, disclosure and the limits of openness
Expertise is indispensable to an electricity debate. Public authorship does not make every technical opinion equally reliable. But experts should explain assumptions, uncertainties and the alternatives their models exclude. Commissioning competing analysis on consequential disputes can prevent one professional network from monopolising the definition of feasibility. Safety requirements must be justified through evidence, with legitimate restrictions distinguished from institutional preferences.
Rotation presents a real trade-off. Short terms may prevent entrenched alliances while making inexperienced members dependent on permanent staff. Staggered appointments, training and retained documentation offer a more balanced approach. Staff expertise should survive changes of membership, while staff recommendations and control over agendas remain reviewable.
Conflict rules should identify relevant financial interests, consultancy relationships and political connections, then specify proportionate responses. Disclosure may require recusal, reassignment or independent assessment; sometimes the interest can be managed without exclusion. Those accused deserve a fair opportunity to respond. Otherwise, conflict allegations themselves become weapons for removing inconvenient participants.
Transparency also has limits. Publishing complainants’ identities or sensitive employment information can expose vulnerable people to retaliation. Cybersecurity details may require controlled access. I would favour public reasons, accessible summaries and protected examination of legitimately restricted evidence. Confidentiality claims should be challengeable, with explanations for withholding information. Neither indiscriminate disclosure nor automatic secrecy secures public authorship.
The dividend must be accountable too
A revision fund needs protection from retaliatory budget cuts, including cuts imposed by the institution it examines. Predictable funding should nevertheless remain subject to publicly justified limits and periodic review. The contribution’s burden on users, especially those with low incomes, must be assessed alongside its benefits. Independence cannot excuse unlimited expenditure.
The trust should publish understandable allocation criteria, administrative costs, grant decisions and reasons for refusal, with privacy protections. Applicants need a practicable appeal route outside the officials who refused them. Administrators should not be able to require preferred intermediaries without justification or finance only research that preserves their own mandate.
Financial audit should be complemented by evaluation of access and institutional performance. Who obtained support? Which proposals were screened out? Could recipients use the resulting knowledge independently? High spending and numerous consultations may conceal poor revision capacity. Auditors also need disclosed interests and protection against interference; their recommendations should receive public responses rather than automatic deference.
The trust should not alone select and dismiss those examining it. Appointment procedures should involve an external authority with a defined mandate, published criteria and reviewable decisions. Yet external appointment can introduce party influence. Comparing audit findings with participant complaints and published evidence helps expose failures that any single reviewer might miss.
Oversight without an endless hierarchy
The question of who oversees the overseers cannot be answered by inventing a perfectly trustworthy final guardian. Adding another supervisory body merely relocates the vulnerability. I favour a bounded distribution of responsibilities: representative institutions authorise the mandate; auditors examine spending and performance; an ombudsman or court, where the adopted legal framework provides, addresses specified procedural failures; affected people retain routes to raise issues and challenge exclusion.
This distribution can become confusing. Each complaint therefore needs an identifiable destination, referral rules and a response deadline. An agency receiving a complaint outside its remit should help direct it appropriately. Overlapping scrutiny is valuable only if responsibility remains intelligible. No participant should be able to evade an answer by pointing indefinitely towards another institution.
These arrangements will not guarantee consensus. Decisions need deadlines and authorised decision-makers, while fundamental protections constrain what majorities may impose. Appeals should have defined grounds and proportionate remedies, so that challenge remains usable without making every disagreement suspend the electricity system. Continuing scrutiny and provisional authority must coexist.
The revision institution must be revisable
Robert Dahl’s work on economic democracy connects unequal economic control with unequal political resources. It is an important predecessor to this concern with effective authority, although his defence of workplace democracy does not itself supply the institutional design proposed here. [5] Participation, audit and institutional replacement likewise have long histories. Reauthorism’s proposed contribution is to organise them around a continuing, materially supported capacity to reconsider essential arrangements before failure.
That principle must apply to the trust itself. Its charter should establish periodic public review and a route for affected minorities to trigger independent examination on stated grounds. The trust must not exclusively decide whether challenges to its composition are admissible. Evidence of serious exclusion, misuse of funds or persistent obstruction could justify reconstitution through an authorised process with notice, reasons and opportunities to respond.
The Successor Duty should preserve records, necessary knowledge, participation commitments and independent resources when the trust is replaced or reorganised. It should not guarantee existing officials their positions. Equally, a government or operator should not be able to abolish revision capacity merely by accusing its administrators of capture. Replacement must preserve the public function while allowing its institutional form to change.
Future publics should be able to reconsider these safeguards and Reauthorism’s principles through inclusive, informed procedures. No present institution deserves unilateral power to close that discussion. I would judge the reauthors by whether people can understand their decisions, contest their exclusions and replace them without losing the capacity they were created to sustain.
Sources
- 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, Preventing Policy Capture: Integrity in Public Decision Making. OECD Publishing, 30 March 2017.
- Mark Bovens, “Analysing and Assessing Accountability: A Conceptual Framework”. European Law Journal 13(4), July 2007, pp. 447–468; first published online 7 June 2007.
- Archon Fung, “Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance”. Public Administration Review 66(s1), December 2006, pp. 66–75; first published online 9 November 2006.
- Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy. University of California Press, 1985; linked paperback edition published August 1986.