The Novice Administrative State: The Function of Regulatory Commissions in the Progressive Era

Abstract

Researchers have long argued that politicians created the modern administrative state in order to bring “experts” into government, and especially into the regulation of business. Yet Progressive-Era politicians themselves rarely discussed the need for experts in creating one form of administrative governance, the independent regulatory commission. By examining the contemporary understanding of regulatory commissions, this article shows that they were intended to act as fact-finding bodies for courts and to substitute for vacillating juries in particular cases. The commission’s most important advantage was that it acquired “experience” over time not that its appointees were already academics or experts in a particular field. This article also shows that the appointments to these commissions did not demonstrate a desire for apolitical expertise. It makes the first examination of all members appointed to the Interstate Commerce Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Power Commission, Federal Communication Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the period from 1887 to 1935. It finds that political and sectional balance, rather than independent expertise, were the most important criteria for these commissions’ members, at least until the late 1920s, after the end of the supposed Progressive Era.