Dictación de normas administrativas: Hacia un nuevo modelo de procedimiento

This paper aims to reorientate the study of administrative rulemaking, which so far has been undertaken from a perspective that frames it as a source of law and remains overly focused on the doctrinal questions posed by its constitutional and statutory foundations. This perspective, it is argued, has important blind spots that may be remedied only if one assumes an approach that takes administrative rulemaking primarily as a modality of administrative action. On this account, the procedural framework of administrative rulemaking acquires pride of place, an aspect that although lacks a general and comprehensive statutory foundation within our administrative law –the law on administrative procedures only contains few and dispersed relevant provisions. However, there is an important recent legislative trend that via sectoral statutes has imposed increasingly relevant and demanding procedural requirements to administrative rulemaking. Arguably, this trend can be seen as coalescing into a “model” that might be generalized. The paper concludes by showing that in order to adequately understand this trend the doctrinal study of administrative rulemaking needs to take on new questions and problems that until now have not been widely considered and that comparative law offers valuable resources to undertake this task.