Intra-Executive Policy Laundering: A New Look at an Old Problem

This paper argues for the existence of a distinct sub-species of policy laundering, referred to here as “intra-executive policy laundering.” It argues that international regulatory coordination may be a vehicle through which one executive agency engages in bureaucratic infighting with another agency in order to push through its own substantive agenda, and to expand its own domestic regulatory autonomy. Consequently, executive agencies will compete to coordinate with counterpart agencies in other States, exacerbating the incidence of policy laundering by the executive as a whole. Intra-executive policy laundering also creates greater difficulties for legislatures and civil society in detecting and opposing policy laundering, as they face a multitude of opponents rather than a monolithic executive. Despite potential benefits in breaking regulatory deadlock and increasing international coordination, this paper argues that the lack of transparency and accountability that accompanies intra-executive policy laundering is more pernicious than that associated with policy laundering by a monolithic executive. Ultimately, however, the language of “policy laundering” is misplaced insofar as it emphasizes a substantive policy pursued by an executive entity, rather than the expansion of that entity’s sphere of autonomy.