New Wine in New Bottles: The Case of the Consumer Product Safety Commission

Abstract

A new agency receives guidelines from the legislature through its enabling statute, yet it still has to interpret that authorization and develop the internal processes to implement that interpretation. This is not an easy task, especially for a new bureau with no past experiences to guide its decisions. The bureau has to define goals and set priorities, determine what information it needs, and devise standard operating procedures. By considering the experiences of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in the 1970s, this article argues that new agencies will tend to have a difficult time implementing their programs because they lack the sophisticated standard operating procedures necessary for effective bureaucratic decision making.1

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