In the current issue of Governance (23.1), Moshe Maor questions the prevailing view that regulatory agencies are “more or less passive actors involving their purview.” Drawing on a study of the US Food and Drug Administration, Maor suggests that regulators will “claim jurisdiction” when new information becomes available about the potential for serious harm from a new technology, or when rival regulators attempt to extend their own jurisdiction over that technology. The underlying concern is to protect organizational reputation. Jurisdictional claiming may not always be rational, Maor argues: “Agency officials do not have all the rational capacity and time to choose the best course of action.” And regulators can act unilaterally, without assurance that political actors will support their jurisdictional claims. Read more: Organizational Reputation and Jurisdictional Claims: The Case of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Archive for February, 2010
Why regulators expands their role
Published February 24, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: Food and Drug Administration, regulation, United States
New modes of governance for long-term societal challenges
Published February 17, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: governance, Netherlands, sustainable development
Modern industrialized societies are confronted with immense long-term challenges. But Derk Loorbach of Erasmus University says that two dominant ways of managing those challenges — top-down steering by government or the free market approach — are inadequate. In the current issue of Governance (23.1), Loorbach describes a new governance approach, “transition management,” drawn from experience in the Netherlands. Broad-based innovation networks created under the banner of transition management produce shared visions for social reform while preserving space for short-term innovation. These networks, says Loorbach, “are increasingly influencing regular policies in areas such as energy supply, mobility, health care, agriculture, and water management.” Read more: Transition Management for Sustainable Development: A Prescriptive, Complexity-Based Governance Framework.
Why do governments adopt regulatory impact assessment?
Published February 11, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: political economy, regulation, regulatory impact assessment
Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) is a kind of “meta-regulation,” says Claudio Radaelli, a technique for guiding the rule-making activity of the state. But why do governments adopt RIA? His cross-national study in the current issue of Governance (23.1) examines the hypothesis that RIA is mainly a tool for tightening political control over the bureaucracy. Radaelli finds strong support for the hypothesis in the United States and United Kingdom, less support in Canada and the Netherlands, and little in Denmark or Sweden. The European Union, meanwhile, constitutes a more complex case for interpreting the role of RIA. Read more: Regulating Rule-Making via Impact Assessment.
How experts “do politics” to achieve policy change
Published February 4, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: Brazil, expertise, policy change, water management
Too many accounts of policy reforms in developing countries discount the role of bureaucrats and experts as agents of policy innovation, Ricardo Gutiérrez argues in the current issue of Governance (23.1). His study of water management reform in three Brazilian states suggests that experts can play the critical role. In these states, reform was not primarily the result of crisis, party or civil society pressure, or intervention by international organizations. Instead, experts drove change. Experts “do politics,” Gutiérrez argues, “when they use expertise as a political resource and broker political, bureaucratic, and social relationships to get their proposals approved and implemented.” Read more: When Experts Do Politics: Introducing Water Policy Reform in Brazil.
