Administrative Law: The People's Watchdog

Advanced nations tend to rely more and more on activist government to enlarge their citizens' wellbeing. But the more government does for people the bigger government gets—and the smaller citizens feel. What champion can fight city hall, slash red tape and rescue the Little Guy from the insolence of Big Bureaucracy?

As far back as 1809, Sweden invented just such a "people's watchdog" and gave him a name, ombudsman, which means representative. Sweden's current ombudsman, Alfred Bexelius, 63, is a unique national mediator who serves the public by prodding laggard civil servants. He and his ten assistants already have counterparts in Denmark, Finland, Norway and New Zealand. Britain recently joined the movement by appointing a "parliamentary commission," and agitation for the appointment of ombudsmen has suddenly become popular all over the U.S. So far, however, the word does not even appear in U.S. dictionaries.

The power of an ombudsman varies from country to country, but all have common characteristics. They are eminent jurists who investigate citizens' complaints against government officials at little or no charge. Although they are instruments of the legislature, they are only generally answerable to it, and have no links with the executive. Their access to official papers is virtually unlimited, permitting them thorough review of administrative actions. One result is that they defend officials as well as citizens and knowledgeably dismiss most complaints as unfounded. Though all seek justice for individuals, their overriding goal is better administration.

Clogged Channels. The strongest argument for American ombudsmen comes from Columbia Law Professor Walter Gellhorn, top U.S. scholar on the subject. Last week Harvard University Press published two Gellhorn books, one a survey of "citizens' protectors" in nine countries, Ombudsmen and Others ($6.95), the other a U.S. study, When Americans Complain ($3.95). Although the U.S. is rich in responsive administrators and procedural safeguards against official abuse, says Gellhorn, the country's channels of complaint are so clogged that citizens either get no hearing or win isolated victories that rarely cure the root causes of their grievances.

U.S. skeptics argue that, in effect, all U.S. Congressmen and state legislators are already ombudsmen. Not so, says Gellhorn. To be sure, Congress receives 100,000 letters a day, a vast percentage of them constituents' requests for anything from Fort Knox gold bricks to intercession with regulatory agencies. Unfortunately, says Gellhorn, the episodic results merely assure individual votes rather than broad reforms. Worse, most state legislators cannot even help their constituents. Thirty state legislatures meet only biennially, and newcomers fill half the seats at each session; only eleven states pay legislators more than $5,000 a year, and funds for adequate staff work are rarely provided. As a result, most citizens' complaints are simply passed on to the official concerned, who may well ignore them.