Publications

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Regulation is a key concern of industries, consumers, citizens, and governments alike. This book provides the reader with an introduction to key debates and discussions in the field of regulation from a number of disciplinary perspectives, looking towards law, economics, business, political science, sociology, and social administration. The text has been revised and updated to take into account the significant developments and events of the past decade. Containing several new chapters, it has been restructured into seven parts, covering: the fundamental issues regarding regulation; different types of regulatory strategies; rules and enforcement; quality and evaluation; regulation at different levels of government; network issues; and concluding thoughts. Drawing on cross-sectoral and cross-national examples, this book reviews the central questions of regulation, and reflects upon those contentious issues that affect the design and operation of regulatory institutions. Amongst other topics, it discusses ‘better regulation’, enforcement, self-regulation, risk regulation, cost-benefit analysis, and more utility regulation-oriented topics, such as price-setting.

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Regulators in a number of countries are increasingly developing “risk‐based” strategies to manage their resources, and their reputations as “risk‐based regulators” have become much lauded by regulatory reformers. This widespread endorsement of risk‐based regulation, together with the experience of regulatory failure, prompts us to consider how risk‐based regulators can attune the logics of risk analyses to the complex problems and the dynamics of regulation in practice. We argue, first, that regulators have to regulate in a way that is responsive to five elements: (1) regulated firms' behavior, attitude, and culture; (2) regulation's institutional environments; (3) interactions of regulatory controls; (4) regulatory performance; and (5) change. Secondly, we argue that the challenges of regulation to which regulators have to respond vary across the different regulatory tasks of detection, response development, enforcement, assessment, and modification. Using the “really responsive” framework, we highlight some of the strengths and limitations of using risk‐based regulation to manage risk and uncertainty within the constraints that flow from practical circumstances and, indeed, from the framework of risk‐based regulation itself. The need for a revised, more nuanced conception of risk‐based regulation is stressed.

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