David Schoenbrod is an attorney who once worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and now teaches at New York Law School. His 1993 book, Power Without Responsibility, argues that legislators often avoid responsibility for their actions by delegating power to bureaucracies. If the bureaucracies succeed, the legislators can take credit; if they fail, the legislators can blame the bureaucrats.
This explains why planning is so popular in a country that supposedly opposed central planning for most of the twentieth century. The planners gladly accept the power that legislators are so eager to delegate. Yet even the planners do not face any responsibility for their actions. If they screw up, their usual “punishment” will be more money and power to try to fix the problems they created.
