Summary Understanding Regulations
Theory, Strategy and Practice
By Robert Baldwin, Martin Cave and Martin Lodge
ISBN 9780199576098
,Index
1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Part I Fundamentals ................................................................................................................................ 5
2 Why regulate? ...................................................................................................................................... 5
3 What is ‘good’ regulation? .................................................................................................................... 9
4 Explaining regulation .......................................................................................................................... 12
5 Regulatory failure ............................................................................................................................... 16
6 Regulating risks .................................................................................................................................. 18
Part II Strategies ................................................................................................................................... 21
7 Regulatory strategies ......................................................................................................................... 21
8 Self-regulation, meta-regulation, and regulatory networks ................................................................ 29
11 Enforcing regulation ......................................................................................................................... 34
12 Responsive regulation...................................................................................................................... 41
14 Standards and principles.................................................................................................................. 45
Part IV Quality and Evaluation .............................................................................................................. 48
15 Cost-Benefit analysis and regulatory impact assessment ............................................................... 48
16 Accountability, procedures and fairness .......................................................................................... 51
17 Regulatory competition and coordination ......................................................................................... 54
Part V Regulation at different levels of government ............................................................................. 56
18 Multi-level regulation ........................................................................................................................ 56
19 Regulation and the European Union ................................................................................................ 58
20 Regulation and development ........................................................................................................... 61
21 Global and international regulation .................................................................................................. 63
2
,1 Introduction
Regulation has become a matter of topical debate in a way that it was not even a single decade ago.
This global phenomenon was partly prompted by the activities of international organizations.
Regularly orthodoxies became increasingly prominent during the financial crisis, when calls for
deregulation and ‘light-touch’ regulation suddenly gave way to daily demands for more rigorous
regulation of the financial markets. Regulations has supporters and opponents:
- Supporters saw regulation as a technocratic device that had the potential to exert rational
controls over important economic and social activities.
- Sceptics regarded regulation as little other than ‘red tape’ and a potential burden on
economic activity.
Because of the many people who study regulation, regulation has reached a state of maturity, both in
an intellectual and in a practical sense.
What is regulation?
Regulation is often spoken of as If an identifiable and discrete mode of governmental activity, yet the
term ‘regulation” has been defined in a number of ways:
- Selznick notion of regulation as sustained and focused control exercised by a public agency
over activities that are valued by a community has been referred to as expressing a central
meaning
- As a specific set of commands: where regulation involves the promulgation of a binding set
of rules to be applied by a body devoted to this purpose. An example would be the health and
safety at work legislation as applied by the Health and Safety Executive.
- As deliberate state influence: where regulation has a more broad sense and covers all state
actions that are designed to influence business or social behaviour.
- As all forms of social or economic influence: where all mechanisms affecting behaviour—
whether these be state-based or from other sources (e.g. markets)—are deemed regulatory
- Regulation has a green light and a red light concept:
o An activity that restricts behaviour and prevents the occurrence of certain undesirable
activities (a ‘red light’ concept)
o The influence of regulation may also be enabling or facilitative (‘green light’ concept)
Issues on the regulatory agenda
The history of regulatory agenda can be seen as a timeline:
- In Britain, regulation has been practised since at least the Tudor and Stuart periods
- In the post-war period, marketing boards followed in the cotton, crofting, sugar, and iron and
steel industries, and the first US-style independent regulatory agency was established in
Britain in 1954 with the Independent Television Authority
- In the United States, independent regulatory bodies had been carrying out key functions of
government since the Inter State Commerce Commission was established in 1887 to limit
discriminatory pricing by railroads
- By the mid-1990s, some 25 million customers were served by the main four regulated utilities
industries alone in the UK
By the turn of the millennium, the appropriateness of regulatory strategies and structures had become
a significant public concern, and this led to a set of responses and debates over the first decade
following 2000:
1. One prominent issue was the governance of regulatory bodies. In the British context,
debates on this matter led not just to a merger of regulatory bodies in energy and
communications, they also produced a change in the leadership structure, with the original,
and initially much-feed ‘Director General’-model being replaced by collective decision-making
boards
2. A second concern related to the effects and biases of regulatory regimes. In particular,
there was a growing worry about investments in infrastructures and the environmental effects
of regulated industries, especially with regard to climate change
3. A third debate that grew in the new millennium was one driven by the emergence of
new technologies and products.
3
, The past decade has witnessed a growing appetite to explore the potential of ‘non-traditional’
methods of regulation. There has been greater weight given to arguments for controlling not by state
regulation but by ‘meta-regulation’ and regimes that focus on auditing the control regimes being
operated within businesses and corporations themselves. A further recent change that has emerged
in parallel with such ‘auditing’ approaches has been the growth of a tendency to see regulatory issues
in terms of risks and to see control issues as questions of risk management. These ideas have been
echoed on different places:
- Governmental bodies have echoed these approaches, and bodies such as the UK’s (then)
Better Regulation Task Force have commended the use of ‘more imaginative’ thinking about
regulation and have stressed the need to adopt minimalist or self-regulatory controls in the
first instance
- International bodies, such as the OECD with its ‘high-quality regulation’ initiative and the
European Union with its own extensive programme on (regulatory) impact assessments
4
Theory, Strategy and Practice
By Robert Baldwin, Martin Cave and Martin Lodge
ISBN 9780199576098
,Index
1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Part I Fundamentals ................................................................................................................................ 5
2 Why regulate? ...................................................................................................................................... 5
3 What is ‘good’ regulation? .................................................................................................................... 9
4 Explaining regulation .......................................................................................................................... 12
5 Regulatory failure ............................................................................................................................... 16
6 Regulating risks .................................................................................................................................. 18
Part II Strategies ................................................................................................................................... 21
7 Regulatory strategies ......................................................................................................................... 21
8 Self-regulation, meta-regulation, and regulatory networks ................................................................ 29
11 Enforcing regulation ......................................................................................................................... 34
12 Responsive regulation...................................................................................................................... 41
14 Standards and principles.................................................................................................................. 45
Part IV Quality and Evaluation .............................................................................................................. 48
15 Cost-Benefit analysis and regulatory impact assessment ............................................................... 48
16 Accountability, procedures and fairness .......................................................................................... 51
17 Regulatory competition and coordination ......................................................................................... 54
Part V Regulation at different levels of government ............................................................................. 56
18 Multi-level regulation ........................................................................................................................ 56
19 Regulation and the European Union ................................................................................................ 58
20 Regulation and development ........................................................................................................... 61
21 Global and international regulation .................................................................................................. 63
2
,1 Introduction
Regulation has become a matter of topical debate in a way that it was not even a single decade ago.
This global phenomenon was partly prompted by the activities of international organizations.
Regularly orthodoxies became increasingly prominent during the financial crisis, when calls for
deregulation and ‘light-touch’ regulation suddenly gave way to daily demands for more rigorous
regulation of the financial markets. Regulations has supporters and opponents:
- Supporters saw regulation as a technocratic device that had the potential to exert rational
controls over important economic and social activities.
- Sceptics regarded regulation as little other than ‘red tape’ and a potential burden on
economic activity.
Because of the many people who study regulation, regulation has reached a state of maturity, both in
an intellectual and in a practical sense.
What is regulation?
Regulation is often spoken of as If an identifiable and discrete mode of governmental activity, yet the
term ‘regulation” has been defined in a number of ways:
- Selznick notion of regulation as sustained and focused control exercised by a public agency
over activities that are valued by a community has been referred to as expressing a central
meaning
- As a specific set of commands: where regulation involves the promulgation of a binding set
of rules to be applied by a body devoted to this purpose. An example would be the health and
safety at work legislation as applied by the Health and Safety Executive.
- As deliberate state influence: where regulation has a more broad sense and covers all state
actions that are designed to influence business or social behaviour.
- As all forms of social or economic influence: where all mechanisms affecting behaviour—
whether these be state-based or from other sources (e.g. markets)—are deemed regulatory
- Regulation has a green light and a red light concept:
o An activity that restricts behaviour and prevents the occurrence of certain undesirable
activities (a ‘red light’ concept)
o The influence of regulation may also be enabling or facilitative (‘green light’ concept)
Issues on the regulatory agenda
The history of regulatory agenda can be seen as a timeline:
- In Britain, regulation has been practised since at least the Tudor and Stuart periods
- In the post-war period, marketing boards followed in the cotton, crofting, sugar, and iron and
steel industries, and the first US-style independent regulatory agency was established in
Britain in 1954 with the Independent Television Authority
- In the United States, independent regulatory bodies had been carrying out key functions of
government since the Inter State Commerce Commission was established in 1887 to limit
discriminatory pricing by railroads
- By the mid-1990s, some 25 million customers were served by the main four regulated utilities
industries alone in the UK
By the turn of the millennium, the appropriateness of regulatory strategies and structures had become
a significant public concern, and this led to a set of responses and debates over the first decade
following 2000:
1. One prominent issue was the governance of regulatory bodies. In the British context,
debates on this matter led not just to a merger of regulatory bodies in energy and
communications, they also produced a change in the leadership structure, with the original,
and initially much-feed ‘Director General’-model being replaced by collective decision-making
boards
2. A second concern related to the effects and biases of regulatory regimes. In particular,
there was a growing worry about investments in infrastructures and the environmental effects
of regulated industries, especially with regard to climate change
3. A third debate that grew in the new millennium was one driven by the emergence of
new technologies and products.
3
, The past decade has witnessed a growing appetite to explore the potential of ‘non-traditional’
methods of regulation. There has been greater weight given to arguments for controlling not by state
regulation but by ‘meta-regulation’ and regimes that focus on auditing the control regimes being
operated within businesses and corporations themselves. A further recent change that has emerged
in parallel with such ‘auditing’ approaches has been the growth of a tendency to see regulatory issues
in terms of risks and to see control issues as questions of risk management. These ideas have been
echoed on different places:
- Governmental bodies have echoed these approaches, and bodies such as the UK’s (then)
Better Regulation Task Force have commended the use of ‘more imaginative’ thinking about
regulation and have stressed the need to adopt minimalist or self-regulatory controls in the
first instance
- International bodies, such as the OECD with its ‘high-quality regulation’ initiative and the
European Union with its own extensive programme on (regulatory) impact assessments
4
