First lines
In this monograph, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Professor at Yale University, undertakes the comparison of four established democracies – France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States – with regard to their efforts in ensuring the accountability of executive policymaking. From the outset, one should stress that Professor Rose-Ackerman is eminently suited to perform this task by both approach and experience. She has a strong background in political economy and shows full awareness of the limitations of certain strands in law and economics, which neglect the importance of collective interests such as environmental protection. She has taught administrative law in the US and has conducted research in the other three countries. She is also an editor of one of the most recent treatises of comparative administrative law. The legal systems selected for comparison, moreover, are well chosen and seem particularly promising to me. Not only are both common law – UK and US – and civil law jurisdictions – France and Germany – covered, but all four chosen systems have developed systems of judicial review designed to protect the individual whose rights or interests are susceptible to be adversely affected by executive decisions. At the same time, those systems differ not only from an institutional perspective, as they range from presidential systems to parliamentary democracies, but also from the viewpoint of the rules governing administrative procedure. Most of them have adopted some kind of administrative procedure legislation, while there is no such thing in the UK. Instead, the courts in the UK seem more willing to relax the requirements for standing than they seem to be in Germany, for example. This procedural differentiation has only partly resulted from traditions. When the US adopted the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (1946), this was the result of a policy change. The vast powers exercised by administrative agencies during and after the New Deal period required a procedural framework which would ensure both accountability as well as the protection of the individual.
