Overview

In The Fourth Branch: Reconstructing the Administrative State for the Commercial Republic Brian J. Cook confronts head-on the accumulating derangements in the American constitutional system and how the administrative state has contributed to the problems, how it has been a key force in addressing the troubles, and how it can be reformed to serve the system better. Cook calls for a decisive, pattern-breaking response in the form of a constitutional redesign to accommodate a fourth branch, an administrative branch. Far more than that, however, the addition of a fourth branch could enhance American constitutionalism by making the separation of powers work better, increasing the likelihood that deliberative lawmaking will occur, strengthening civic capacity and public engagement in governance, and improving both accountability and coordination in the administrative state. By stressing that the administrative state in its current form is both biased toward business and seriously undermined by subordination to the three constitutional branches, Cook contends that neither abandoning the administrative state nor more deeply constitutionalizing or democratizing it within the existing constitutional structure is sufficient to fully legitimate and capitalize on administrative power to serve the public interest.

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Brian J. Cook is professor emeritus of public administration and policy, Virginia Tech. He is the author of numerous books, including Democracy and Administration: Woodrow Wilson's Ideas and the Challenges of Public Management and Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics, 2nd edition. Peter Lerman is a narrator from the heart of New York City: Brooklyn born and raised. Manhattan and Brooklyn were suffused with the flavors and sounds of the entire world. He tasted it all and heard it all. When you come of age in NYC, nothing is foreign. When you hear a low grumble in his voice on occasion, it is authentic. His first wife told him that he loved her not nearly as much as he loved the sound of his own voice. This made him wonder if other people might love the sound of his voice as well. And so, a narrator was born. Also, an amateur thespian, a trade show presenter, a lecturer, an off-key cabaret singer, and an inveterate teller of jokes one does not tell in mixed company. Peter has been a professional photographer in New York City, owned a model and talent management company, and knocked around from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back again only to wind up in Connecticut. His breath control is fabulous because he is also a board certified respiratory therapist. He has appeared onstage as Horace Vandergelder in Hello Dolly, Gangster #2 in Kiss Me Kate, Bobby Gould in Speed-the-Plow, the Governor of Texas in Best Little Whorehouse . . ., Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Lenny in Rumors. The voice is deep and resonant. Sometimes formal, sometimes not. Never stale. Always eminently listenable.

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