This essay examines certain epistemic problems facing administrative states’ efforts to draft efficient regulations for their societies. I argue that a basic feature of the administrative state’s authority, namely its monopoly over the production of legally binding rules for all members of a geographically defined society, creates epistemic problems that impede efficient rule-making. Specifically, the administrative state’s monopoly over the production of legally binding rules prevents multiple public policies from being simultaneously implemented and compared. The resulting singularity of administrative states’ regulatory decisions prevents observation of the counterfactual effects of policies that were possible but which were not implemented. The absence of observable policy counterfactuals frustrates efforts to assess the efficiency of administrative states’ decisions, as it is impossible to determine whether different policies would have generated greater benefits at lower cost than the policy the state implemented. As these epistemic problems are derived from the singularity of administrative states’ decisions, they exist independently of principal agent problems, suboptimal incentives, or the preferences and capabilities of administrative personnel.

中文翻译：

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效率、合法性和行政国家

本文考察了行政国家在为其社会起草有效法规的努力中所面临的某些认知问题。我认为，行政国家权威的一个基本特征，即它对为地理界定的社会的所有成员制定具有法律约束力的规则的垄断，会产生阻碍有效规则制定的认知问题。具体而言，行政国家对具有法律约束力的规则产生的垄断阻碍了多项公共政策同时实施和比较。由此产生的行政国家监管决定的单一性阻止了对可能但未实施的政策的反事实影响的观察。缺乏可观察到的政策反事实阻碍了评估行政州决策效率的努力，因为无法确定不同的政策是否会以比国家实施的政策更低的成本产生更大的收益。由于这些认知问题源于行政国家决策的奇异性，它们独立于委托代理问题、次优激励或行政人员的偏好和能力而存在。