Presidential Study Directive 8

While health reform gets most of the headlines, behind the scenes the Obama Administration is building momentum on Export Control Reform.

"U.S. President Barack Obama has directed his administration to recommend by no later than Jan. 29 steps leading to an overhaul of the U.S. export control regime, according to a presidential directive signed Dec. 21.

The recommendations are to be based on the findings of a sweeping interagency review of U.S. rules that govern exports of unclassified military and dual-use technologies — including commercial communications satellites — announced by the White House Aug. 13.

“The results of this review shall be used to prepare a comprehensive set of recommendations to create a new U.S. export control system,” states the Dec. 21 document, known as Presidential Study Directive 8. “The recommendations shall include statutory and regulatory steps necessary for implementation.”

When (and if) these recommendations will be publicly available is unknown. What's also unknown is whether Obama will have the political capital to institute comprehensive export control reform. The problems associated with the U.S. export control system have been in public discourse for sometime - and w/regards to commercial communication satellites - an active lobby is on Capital Hill seeking reform. But no significant action in the fields of satellites and space qualified components have been instituted since the enactment of the Strom Thurmond Defense Act of 1999.

Why? This question is of the utmost interest to me as I write the 5th chapter of my Ph.D. thesis. To answer this question I am examining theories of public decision making.

A working-paper by Ronald Cass and John Haring (Boston University School of Law, 2000) may hold some of the clues. In this paper theories of public decision making are examined within the context of export controls generally. They essentially provide two alternative theories to explain what "on the surface" seems as irrational (e.g. maintaining ITAR export controls on Commercial COMSATS). One theory is that there are other 'benefits' not being factored into the typical public discourse associated with the impact of export controls. The second theory is that the public decision maker is receiving a benefit from the maintenance that justifies individual decisions to maintain controls at the cost of negative externalities to other actors in the society. In Chapter 5 of my thesis, I run with some of their theories (expand on them as well) in the applied context of US Commercial Communication Satellites Export Controls.