Steven Aftergood: Open Government Directive a Unilateral Effort; May Encounter Resistance
Significantly, the new open government policy directive did not emerge from the exercise of “checks and balances” by the other branches of government. Congress did not urge the Administration to promote a culture of openness, much less compel its adoption. Instead, it is a unilateral executive branch effort, akin in its conception to Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary’s landmark Openness Initiative of the 1990s, but now extended for the first time to the entire executive branch.
Success is not guaranteed.
The previous Administration used to invoke the theory of “the unitary executive,” which generally holds that all executive branch power and authority is vested in the President. But the opposite may be closer to the real state of affairs, in the sense that the exercise of presidential authority is dependent on innumerable acts of compliance by scattered officials any of whom can, whether through disobedience or incompetence, frustrate the implementation of policy. And the more ambitious the proposed change, the more likely it is to encounter resistance.
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