https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-procedure-fetish/
If America has a procedure problem, it may be because it has a lawyer problem. Among lawyers, anxiety about agency legitimacy is reflexively invoked to defend the legally imposed procedures that structure agency decision-making. Here’s Richard Stewart, a titan in the field: “The traditional conception of administrative law . . . bespeaks a common social value in legitimating, through controlling rules and procedures, the exercise of power over private interests by officials not otherwise formally accountable.” Similar statements abound in the literature. Every procedure under the sun has been defended, at one time or another, as a guarantor of the fragile legitimacy of the administrative state.
But it pays to be precise. It is reasonable to believe that procedural regularity is an important facet of government legitimacy. But legitimacy is not solely — not even primarily — a product of the procedures that agencies follow. Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive, and fair. Mandatory procedures may sometimes advance those values. They can focus agencies on priorities they may have ignored, orient bureaucracies to broader public goals, and improve the quality of agency deliberations. But procedures can also burn agency resources on senseless paperwork, empower lawyers at the expense of experts, and frustrate agencies’ ability to act. When procedures impair an agency’s ability to do its job, they can drain an agency of legitimacy.