政府官僚體系能否規避於民主課責機制之外呢？本文係運用交易成本政治學的架構，以析探何時、於何種情形下，以及至何種程度，立法人員在權力分立體系下會傾向於授權的決定。我們假定立法人員把連任視為主要的活動目標，而政策產出方式乃以極大化立法人員的連任契機而進行。邏輯上，我們提出政策專業與複雜性、立法－行政關係，以及委員會系統的效率性等政治因素，皆可能對立法授權的決定產生影響。其後，我們主張立法人員還須介入處理立法授權的風險問題。典型上，立法人員授權後將面臨到此等交易問題，諸如代理損失、立法利益的不確定，以及連任不確定性等疑慮。學者即指出，立法人員可能偏好以程序控制技術來降低監督成本之問題。最後我們將回歸民主體系角度，闡釋「程序政治」論點，可謂是民主與官僚之間緊張關係的縮影。

Do government bureaucracies lie beyond the reach of democratic accountability? In this paper, we apply transaction cost politics framework to understand when, under what conditions, and to what extent legislators attempt to delegate to the executive in a separation of powers. We assume that legislators' basic political goal is reelection and policy will be made in such a way as to maximize legislators' reelection chances. Logically, variations in political conditions--such as the distribution of expertise among legislators' and agency officials, legislative-executive relations, and the performance of the committee system, will engender variations in the extent and nature of legislative delegation to executive. We then claim that the legislators must solve the problem of delegating just the right amount of authority to agencies in just the right way. Thus, legislators typically have to deal with these transaction problems, such as agency loss, cost of uncertainty, or undone by subsequent legislative coalitions. Furthermore, scholars have found that legislators may prefer to reduce monitoring costs by using fire alarm control techniques. Following the theories of “procedural politics”, we finally return to center on the issue of relationship between democracy and bureaucracy.