>success of a long-term project can be ensured through the procedures described in the source article: you set up a durable judicial system, and invest them with the power to require that the country uphold its end of the bargain, no matter how much its current political leaders might want to change course.
That's an abuse of the judicial system. Politicians are elected exactly because the voters perceive a need to change the execution of government's functions.
The thing is, you cannot beat human moral qualities with formalist means. People who come to power by raising hatred towards their political opponents will always find a way to subvert policies even if not cancel them.
Long-term policies should be established through consensus among all parties, not though legalistic bureaucracy.
Perhaps you don't think legalistic bureaucracy should matter, but the voters' representatives in Congress don't agree. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, government agencies must produce legalistic bureaucratic reasons for their actions; they may not act capriciously to suit the whims of political leaders or transient desires for a change.
Congress certainly has the power to change this if they want to. But without something like the APA, private businesses exposed to federal regulation would struggle to make any plans beyond the current US Presidential term. So they do not want to.
>Under the Administrative Procedure Act, government agencies must produce legalistic bureaucratic reasons for their actions; they may not act capriciously to suit the whims of political leaders or transient desires for a change.
Well, this is sort of against the spirit of the US constitution, at least as explained in the Federalist. I might even call it an abuse of the Legislative system.
I'm not speaking very confidently here, but by the spirit of it, the Congress should not do this much of micro-management of the Executive.
Surely the Congress should pass the laws which _prevent_ the Executive from doing stupid things, in particular collecting too much taxes, but it shouldn't really tell the Executive "do this, in this particular way".
To be honest, I suspect that the actual _reason_ every administration tries to undo as much of the actions of the previous administration as they can is because due to the amount of limits imposed on them by the Congress they they cannot do much else. Fighting the Congress is much harder than fighting the previous administration.
I seriously suspect that if the amount of regulation is decreased, it will actually be beneficial to long-term policy stability, because instead of fighting the decisions of the previous administration the current one would be busy with it's own projects.
That's an abuse of the judicial system. Politicians are elected exactly because the voters perceive a need to change the execution of government's functions.
The thing is, you cannot beat human moral qualities with formalist means. People who come to power by raising hatred towards their political opponents will always find a way to subvert policies even if not cancel them.
Long-term policies should be established through consensus among all parties, not though legalistic bureaucracy.