Beyond Administrative Tunnel Vision: Widening the Lens of Costs and Benefits
Document Type
Article
Publication
The Georgetown journal of law & public policy
Year
2017
Citation Information
Govind Persad, Beyond Administrative Tunnel Vision: Widening the Lens of Costs and Benefits, 15 941 (2017), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/1978.
Abstract
Choices in one sector or department of public policy, such as health, frequently produce costs and benefits in other sectors, such as education or the environment. In this article, I argue that administrators should not make decisions in ways that ignore effects on other policy sectors, and arguablythough more debatably-should not give special priority to the interests of their own sector In Part I, I review contexts where administrators are directed to ignore or give a lower priority to effects on other policy sectors. In Part II, I lay out an argument that agencies should not ignore these effects (using an example from health policy), and consider potential responses to that argument. In Part III, I consider some strategies to remedy the problem of agencies giving insufficient weight to wide-scope costs and benefits.