What are Administrative Agencies?
An administrative agency is an agency that is established by Congress in order to regulate something that Congress might not have the expertise and knowledge to regulate themselves. When Congress decides they do want to establish an administrative agency, they must go through the enabling legislation process. During this time, they will name the agency, establish its structure, and figure out what the agency is authorized to do.
An administrative agency is created by Congress to implement policy in a specific area. Administrative agencies allow the national government to do more than it could otherwise because Congress itself cannot implement policy. By creating an administrative agency to implement policy, it allows professionals in the relevant field to determine how best to implement the policies the national government has formulated.
I said just a moment ago that Congress creates administrative agencies, and Congress creates these agencies through something known as enabling legislation. Enabling legislation has three main roles, it says what the name of the agency is going to be, it outlines how it’s going to be structured, and it outlines what the agency is authorized to do.
A well-known administrative agency is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but it’s more well known as O-S-H-A or OSHA. Since OSHA is an administrative agency, we know it had to be created by enabling legislation. The enabling legislation that created it is the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
This legislation said that this is what the name of the agency is going to be, talked about how it’s going to be structured (how the whole hierarchy of it is going to be set up), and then it talks about what the agency is authorized to do. If you’re not familiar with OSHA, the agency is authorized to create policies for the safety of workers in the workplace.
Congress doesn’t really have the time to determine all the policies that should be implemented in the workplace. They don’t have time to determine when it should be required that employees wear hardhats. Instead, Congress creates this administrative agency called OSHA, and then gives OSHA the power to determine when it should be required that employees wear hardhats in the workplace.
Congress doesn’t have the time to carry out all the functions of the administrative agency, but they also don’t necessarily have the knowledge to do so, because people in Congress come from a wide variety of occupational and educational backgrounds, so they’re not really experts when it comes to hardhats, or at least most of them are not.
By creating this administrative agency, now experts can be hired by OSHA to determine when hardhats need to be required in the workplace. That’s a more efficient way for these policies to be enacted, because Congress is still kind of setting the overall agenda here.
They’re saying these are the types of policies we want you to enact, but the administrative agency is going to formulate the specific policies (or the specifics of those policies), so that Congress does not have to worry about that. That’s a look at an administrative agency.