1. Introduction: power, welfare, incentives, values -- Part I. Welfare: the problem, and a possible solution -- 2. The evolution of the administrative state -- 3. The purposes and functional modes of the administrative state: market failure and government failure -- 4. The structure of the administrative state: a hierarchy from simple agents to trustees (and guardians) -- 5. Principles for whether to delegate to independent agencies: credible commitment to settled goals -- 6. Design precepts for how to delegate to independent agencies -- 7. Applying the principles -- Part II. Values: democratic legitimacy for independent agencies -- 8. independent agencies and our political values and beliefs (1): rule of law and constitutionalism -- 9. Independent agencies and our political values and beliefs (2): the challenges to delegation-with-insulation presented by the democracy -- 10. Credible commitment versus democracy: agencies versus judges -- 11. The political-values-and-norms robustness test of the principles for delegation -- 12. Insulated agencies and constitutionalism: central bank independence driven by the separation of powers but not a fourth branch -- Part III. Incentives: the administrative state in the real world; incentives and values under different constitutional structures -- 13. States' capacity for principled delegation to deliver credible commitment -- 14. The problem of vague objectives: a nondelegation doctrine for IAs -- 15. Processes, transparency, and accountability: legal constraints versus political oversight -- 16. The limits of design: power, emergencies, and self-restraint -- Part IV: Power: overmighty citizens? The political economy of central banking; power, legitimacy, and reconstruction -- 17. Central banking and the politics of a monetary policy -- 18. The shift in ideas : credibility as a surprising door to legitimacy -- 19. Tempting the gods: monetary regime orthodoxy before the crisis -- 20. A money-credit constitution: central banks and banking stability -- 21. Central banking and the regulatory state: stability policy -- 22. Central banking and the fiscal state: balance-sheet policy and the fiscal carve-out -- 23. Central banks and the emergency state: lessons from military/civilian relations for the lender of last resort -- 24. Overmighty citizens after all? Threats and reconfigurations -- Conclusion: unelected democrats: citizens in service, not in charge -- Appendix: the principles for delegation to independent agencies insulated from day-to-day politics.

"Central bankers have emerged from the financial crisis as the third great pillar of unelected power alongside the judiciary and the military. They pull the regulatory and financial levers of our economic well-being, yet unlike democratically elected leaders, their power does not come directly from the people. Unelected Power lays out the principles needed to ensure that central bankers, technocrats, regulators, and other agents of the administrative state remain stewards of the common good and do not become overmighty citizens. Paul Tucker draws on a wealth of personal experience from his many years in domestic and international policymaking to tackle the big issues raised by unelected power, and enriches his discussion with examples from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union. Blending economics, political theory, and public law, Tucker explores the necessary conditions for delegated but politically insulated power to be legitimate in the eyes of constitutional democracy and the rule of law. He explains why the solution must fit with how real-world government is structured, and why technocrats and their political overseers need incentives to make the system work as intended. Tucker explains how the regulatory state need not be a fourth branch of government free to steer by its own lights, and how central bankers can emulate the best of judicial self-restraint and become models of dispersed power." -- Taken from dust jacket.