E-Rulemaking: Bringing Data to Theory at the Federal Communication Commission

This Article examines the theoretical promise of e-rulemaking with an examination of data about all filings at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 1999 to 2004. The Article first reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on e-rulemaking. It then analyzes a dataset of all filings at the FCC using descriptive statistics and regression analysis to determine what drives e-filings and whether the theoretical promise of e-rulemaking is being realized six years into the experiment. The Article finds that though there has indeed been a long-term trend away from paper filings and toward electronic filings, citizen participation seems not to have increased from earlier time periods.

Rather, e-filing at the FCC has resulted in a marginal change to the rulemaking process and is merely another avenue by which interested parties file comments.