Book Review: Regulatory Bureaucracy

• Author: A. Stewart Kerr
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X8202700208
• Date: 01 June 1982
• Published date: 01 June 1982
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

The Antitrust Bulletin/Summer 1982

Regulatory Bureaucracy

Robert A. Katzmann

Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The MIT Press (1980),

IX +215 pp.

517

Reviewed by A. Stewart Kerr,

Kerr,

Russell and

Weber,

Detroit,

Michigan.

Regulatory Bureaucracy is better defined by its subtitle, The

Federal

Trade

Commission and Antitrust Policy.

It

serves a

different purpose than Quentin Riegel's fine article on "The FTC

in the 1980's."* The Katzmann book analyzes how the FTC

works. What makes it tick? Although Mr. Katzmann's analysis

seems objective he is, in the end, persuaded that on balance the

FTC has been unfairly maligned for the past couple

of

years.

Indeed, the author is at pains to state this in a two-page epilogue.

He believes that the agency has not defied the will of Congress

but that the legislature vested the agency with broad powers and

unclear directives as to the meaning

of

the statutory language.

Moreover, he thinks it unfair that the public perceives the FTC as

"the engine

of

over-regulation" and points to the FTC's interest

in such things as airline deregulation.

All ten chapters deal with internal considerations: how staff is

selected and how staff selects cases; the situation with two

bureaus vying for favor with the commissioners; the roles

of

the

commissioners and their personal staffs; budgetary considera-

tions. The author plunks for selection

of

cases on a planned

approach to selected large industries as contrasted with the

mailbag complaints policy of yesteryear. He also has kind words

for Chairman Kirkpatrick's caliber upgrading

of

professional

personnel.

Riegel, The

FTC

in the 1980's:

An

Analysis

of

the

FTC

Improve-

ments

Act

of

1980,

26

ANTITRUST

BULL.

449 (1981).

©1982by Federal Legal Publications, Inc.