Bureaucratizing Democracy, Democratizing Bureaucracy |
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| Authors: | Wendy Nelson Espeland |
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| Affiliation: | Wendy Nelson Espeland;is associate professor of sociology. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1996 Summer Institute, sponsored by the Law and Society Association, and at Georgetown Law School. I am grateful to participants, especially Ben Forest, Terry Halliday, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Rob Rosen, Joachim Savelsberg, and Tom Tyler, for their comments. Thanks also to Brian Gran, Cathy O'Leary, and Tim Woods for suggestions that improved my argument, and to the Lochinvar Society for its sustained warmth. |
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| Abstract: | This article analyzes the relationship between how rationality is conceived and how democracy is practiced in the Bureau of Reclamation, a water development agency in the Department of Interior. The efforts of some inside the agency to institutionalize rational decision-making models, partly in response to new environmental law, expanded the number and range of interest groups that participated in its decisions fry incorporating their preferences into their models for evaluating plans. But the terms under which people could express their values and interests were strictly controlled in ways that some felt misrepresented their concerns. How we conceive of rationality has important implications for how and which people are included in bureaucratic decision making. |
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