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    Madison's Missing Branch
    Madison's Missing Branch
    Madison's Missing Branch
    Ebook224 pages2 hours

    Madison's Missing Branch

    By Bruce M. Owen

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    The role of the U.S. government in regulating economic and social interactions has grown exponentially since the establishment of "Madisonian democracy" in 1788. This has undermined one of the Founders' tacit assumptions—that the federal government's role would be small. Further, Madison's theory that central government would reduce political corruption has been falsified by experience.

    Today the three-branch structure is inadequate to control vastly increased opportunities for private interests to influence policy. The power of private interests is unbalanced; easily organized influencers have far more weight than large, poorly organized interests. The result is policies that promote inequality. In addition, legislators and administrators rely on interest group information and resources in making policy decisions. There is little incentive for policymakers to consider their impact on the "general welfare," however measured.

    Moreover, there is little effective quality control of federal policies. The standard remedy for these imperfections is the regulation of campaign financing and lobbying. Unfortunately, the First Amendment constrains such regulation. I propose the creation, within the Madisonian framework, of a genuinely independent fourth branch with the power to veto policies that reduce aggregate welfare and equality of means.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBruce M. Owen
    Release dateSep 25, 2021
    ISBN9798201851248
    Madison's Missing Branch
    Author

    Bruce M. Owen

    Bruce M. Owen Bruce M. Owen is the Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor in Public Policy, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow, Emeritus, in Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research. For a decade ending in 2015, he was Director of the Stanford Public Policy Program. He earlier established an international reputation as an expert on antitrust economics and was the leading academic student of the economics of mass media markets. He was regarded as a principal architect of the 1974 U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit that led to the dissolution of the old Bell System, and he testified at the trial of the case in 1981. At Stanford, has taught courses in economic analysis of law, tele-communications law and policy, and political corruption. Until 2003, Owen was CEO of Economists Incorporated, a Washington DC consulting firm.  Previously, he was the Chief Economist of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and, earlier, of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy. He was also a faculty member at Duke University, and before that at Stanford. Owen was graduated from Williams College in 1965, and from Stanford in 1970 with a Ph.D. in economics. Professor Owen is the author or co-author of numerous articles and eight books, including Television Economics (1974), Economics and Freedom of Expression (1975), The Regulation Game (1978), The Political Economy of Deregulation (1983), Video Economics (1992).  He was an expert witness in several antitrust and regulatory proceedings. In addition to United States v. AT&T, these included United States Football League v. National Football League. His most recent book, The Internet Challenge to Television, was published by Harvard University Press in 1999.

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