Cultures of administrative law in Europe: From Weberian bureaucracy to ‘law and economics’

Abstract

This essay will discuss how economic theories have enriched and influenced administrative jurisprudence and the culture of administrative law in Germany and Switzerland. Starting out from Weber’s model of bureaucracy, the essay describes and critically appraises the influences of both the economic theory of bureaucracy and transaction cost theory on new administrative law paradigms such as New Public Management, Steering and Governance. By the same token, it shows an evolution in administrative law culture: whereas Weber presupposed a common rationality that systematic legal systems needed to be based upon, new administrative law is based on value pluralism, governing the different values by formalizing the interactions between players instead of the formalization of values. By doing so, it switches administrative law from top-down regulation based on value monotony to process-oriented networks based on value pluralism.