Negotiated rulemaking (sometimes known as "regulatory negotiation" or "reg-neg") is a technique used by Federal agencies to bring interested parties into the rule-drafting process at an early stage.

In negotiated rulemaking, the agency will announce in the Federal Register that it is considering using reg-neg and will seek out the potentially interested participants. The agency, then, with the assistance of a neutral adviser known as a "convenor," assembles a committee of representatives of all affected interests to negotiate the text of a proposed rule. (This aspect of the process is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act.) The goal of the process is to reach consensus on a text that all parties can accept. The agency is also represented at the table by an official who is able to speak authoritatively on behalf of the agency. Negotiating sessions, however, are chaired not by the agency representative, but by a neutral mediator or "facilitator" skilled in assisting in the resolution of multi-party disputes. If a consensus is achieved by the committee, the agency ordinarily would publish the draft rule based on that consensus in a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) and the agency would have committed itself in advance to doing so. Even negotiations that fail to result in consensus on a draft rule can still be very useful to the agency by narrowing the issues in dispute.

Negotiated rulemaking should be viewed as a supplement to the rulemaking provisions of the APA. This means that the negotiation sessions generally take place prior to the issuance of the NPRM. Negotiated rulemaking does not reduce in any way the agency's obligations to follow the APA process, to produce a rule within its statutory authority, or to adequately explain the result.

Congress has endorsed this process in the Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990, (5 U.S.C. § 561-570), and it is also endorsed in E.O. 12866.