ABSTRACT
The definition of democratic consolidation outlined in Chapter 1 of this book included the notion that democratically elected civilians hold ultimate decision-making authority within the political system. In many areas of policy-making, this stipulation becomes somewhat ambiguous. For instance, civilian governments in many western democracies have delegated a considerable amount of policy-making and oversight capabilities to regulatory agencies which are not directly accountable to the public, particularly in realms deemed to be of a fairly technical nature, such as telecommunications and transportation (see Majone 1996). Although the democratic nature of decision-making in these policy areas can be called into question, it is still very much the case that civilians make the initial decision to create the regulatory body and that elected civilians continue to provide policy-making direction to such agencies, as well as some parliamentary oversight.
