This paper invites the readers to rethink regulatory governance by examining how trust-based and rule-based governance interact. To do this, it uses analytical narratives of three fictional polities: “Trustland”, “Regland”, and “Concordia”. Each polity represents a stylized model of governance: Trustland is anchored in trust-based governance, Regland in rule-based governance, and Concordia evolves as an attempt for a synergy of both. The analysis reveals the deep logics, political tensions, and institutional trade-offs involved in governing through trust and through rules. It traces how different conceptions and priorities around trust and rules compete in each of the three fictional countries. Trustland is not Utopia, Regland is not Dystopia, and Concordia may be better understood as a “Protopia” – a space of gradual, contested improvement. Four modes of governance compete in each polity to capture alternative configurations of institutional alignment, interaction, and conflicts. Rather than advocating a normative ideal, the paper positions each polity as a field of ongoing political struggle over legitimacy claims, institutional boundary-drawing, and authority. These imaginative narratives offer a framework for rethinking how governance legitimacy is articulated, organized, and contested in contemporary regulatory systems. In so doing, it provides an innovative way of thinking and rethinking the academic field and practice of regulatory governance.

Polycentric governance is a trust-intensive and trust-dependent governance that should actively seek to build and restore trust. The different ways in which this is done are poorly understood. Our study of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies and the green transition clarifies the role of enhanced self-regulation and intermediaries in trust-building and trust-repair in polycentric governance. ESG rating providers as intermediaries may help to build and repair trust, but as with any trustee, they represent a trust challenge as well. This article addresses these issues and is organized around three major questions: First, what are the political dynamics around the adoption of the rules for ESG ratings providers in the EU and United Kingdom? Second, what are the differences between the trust-building and the trust-repair strategies deployed? Third, how do these differences reflect the different approaches to the trust challenges of regulation by and of intermediaries? We apply process tracing and a comparative analysis of the regulation of ESG rating providers to generate insights into the trust-building and trust-repair strategies of rule-makers. Our analysis leads us to identify varieties of enhanced self-regulation that are differentiated by the regulatory strategies adopted by the rule-makers vis-à-vis regulatory intermediaries. We show how such efforts may combine different elements of mandatory and voluntary regulation, and we shed light on the differentiated conceptualizations and complexities of the function of trust in polycentric governance regimes as a whole.

This article introduces the multifaceted roles of intermediaries in policy and governance processes. Intermediaries are organizations and actors that bridge the gap between the public and private sectors. They help resolve conflicting interests, transfer knowledge across different sectors and organizational levels, and facilitate policy coordination and collaboration in complex institutional environments. While certain types of intermediaries have long been recognized as important actors in policy systems, their functions and conceptualization remain inadequately understood. We argue that intermediaries fulfill distinctly different functions depending on their position within various stages of the policy process and the specific governance contexts in which they operate. These functional variations significantly influence policy outputs and outcomes, and governance effectiveness, yet current scholarship lacks sufficient empirical depth to fully conceptualize these differences. To address this gap and facilitate improved theoretical understanding of intermediary functions across diverse policy stages and governance settings, we need to substantially expand our empirical knowledge base. This special issue contributes to this objective by presenting comprehensive case studies and comparative analyses that illuminate the complex, context-dependent nature of intermediary roles, thereby laying crucial groundwork for future conceptual development in this emerging field. Drawing on eight original case studies, it shows how intermediaries act as translators, negotiators, and strategic actors across varied institutional landscapes. Together, the contributions illuminate the relational, contested, and performative dimensions of intermediary work, challenging technocratic accounts, and offering a powerful lens for understanding contemporary governance.

Finance is among the most influential activities in our economies and societies. Financialisation – the embeddedness of finance into our social, economic, and political life – is progressing. Large parts of finance are being determined and performed on the global level. We point out the ‘public good’ qualities of global financial governance. Stability is the prominent example. We briefly describe the global financial architecture and show that contrary to its importance, current global financial governance is fragmented in several aspects. For example, no central global financial institution exists to set and enforce formal global rules on finance. Therefore, we argue that better regulatory governance at the national, regional, and global level is of great importance, not only because it can bring more stability but also because it can bring more sustainable growth and a fairer, more equal world, while also improving the life chances of millions who live in poverty.

Transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness are central concepts in the literature on public administration. They are considered qualities that enable administrative bodies to share power with social and political actors and strengthen their democratic nature. These qualities have also been recognized as crucial for regulatory bodies, especially because of the technocratic nature of these bodies. Despite their importance, the literature provides limited measurement of these qualities, which means that neither the extent to which regulatory bodies are formally required to provide for transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness nor the extent to which they do so in practice can be captured and compared adequately. To address this gap, we develop measures of ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness from a novel data set of 49 national, subnational and supranational regulatory bodies in three sectors (data protection, food safety and finance) and in nine countries. We use Item Response Theory methods to validate the indicators and their relative weight in the measure, providing a tool substantiated by comprehensive data to assess how regulatory bodies enhance democratic governance.

The environmental impacts of infrastructure projects are widely assessed through a procedure known as environmental impact assessments (EIAs). In many regulatory systems, EIAs are carried out by third-party intermediaries. However, their roles and effectiveness within public policy and regulatory governance remain understudied. This study addresses this gap by examining 24 wind energy projects deliberated in Israeli planning committees between 2003 and 2024. Specifically, we ask: (1) What intermediary roles do EIAs and those responsible for their implementation play? (2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of EIAs as an intermediation mechanism? (3) How do these strengths and weaknesses shape their effectiveness? Our analysis identifies five key intermediary roles: two formal roles, which are legally defined—providing advisory services and facilitating enforcement and compliance—and three informal roles, which extend beyond strict regulatory mandates—interpretation, dialogue facilitation, and advocacy. The formal roles ensure compliance with regulatory guidelines and advance environmental expertise, thereby meeting regulatory requirements and contributing to high procedural effectiveness. However, challenges persist, particularly regarding informal roles, which are often influenced by intermediaries’ alignment with developers’ interests. These challenges contribute to relatively low substantive effectiveness, as planning committees frequently find EIAs insufficient for informed decision-making, leading them to seek external consultants for validation. The gap between EIAs meeting regulatory requirements and planning committees’ inability to fully rely on them highlights weaknesses in EIA governance as a mechanism of regulatory intermediation. We argue that formalizing informal intermediary roles with clearer guidelines could improve EIA effectiveness, enhance objectivity, and strengthen decision-making in the EIA framework.

(Dis)trust is referred to in the literature as both an antecedent and/or a consequence of regulation and regulatory governance in terms of regulatory content, procedures, and (behavior of) actors, and vice versa. However, trust and regulation might be competing and eroding each other, substituting for or mutually reinforcing each other. The chapter first discusses theoretical perspectives like the regulatory trust triangle, and how choices in terms of institutional design (e.g., mono- versus polycentric regimes, independence), strategies (like command and control versus self-regulation), as well as performance might signal and determine trust in regulatory regimes and regulatory agencies. Existing empirical knowledge from an actor- and relation-oriented perspective is reviewed, discussing trust from citizens and regulatees in regulatory agencies and regulatory regimes, trust between political, administrative, regulatory, and interest group actors in regimes, and how trust and distrust affect the functioning and performance of regulatory regimes. Future research strategies are outlined.

The global experience of political polarization, and politicians' attacks on democratic institutions, render individuals' identification with the governing coalition, or with its opposition, a likely antecedent of their attraction to work in government. This article examines to what extent individuals' partisan alignment with the governing coalition, and perceptions of its actions as a threat to democracy, shapes attraction to government jobs. Findings are based on a two-stage survey with 1861 Israeli panel respondents, aged 21–30, carried out during the government's attempt to undermine the legal system (hereafter: the Judicial Overhaul), and a follow-up survey experiment with 1211 of the respondents. Against the politically neutral explanations of previous research, we show that partisan alignment affects the propensity to choose a job in a government ministry versus other sectors. We find mixed evidence in support of the proposition that perceptions of the Judicial Overhaul as a threat to democracy underlie this effect.

The increasing institutionalization of regulatory oversight worldwide has not resulted in the creation of numerous formal channels of transnational regulatory oversight cooperation. Despite its puzzling nature, this circumstance has barely attracted scholarly attention. Additionally, the study of cooperation across transgovernmental regulatory networks with actors having low autonomy from central governments remains under-researched. We fill these literature gaps by applying insights from the policy networks literature to identify drivers of transnational regulatory oversight cooperation. Combining Exponential Random Graph Models with semi-structured interviews, we show that commonalities in administrative traditions drive cooperation. Innovative bodies become sources of best practices. Conversely, exchanges between countries with similar regulatory oversight settings or preferences are rare, perhaps due to their low independence from their political principals. These results suggest that regulatory oversight actors use relational opportunities and general country features as cues for transnational cooperation, instead of adopting strategic partnerships with better matches.

This article examines the evolving institutional challenges of global governance by analyzing four key sectors: trade, security, environment, and finance. Recent transformations have increased their complexity and fragmentation in these sectors, challenging the traditional dominance of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Based on the findings of the H2020 GLOBE project and a survey of 1,004 IGO staff, we discuss four major cross-sectoral challenges: decision-making gridlocks, organizational inefficiencies, weak institutional autonomy, and operational difficulties. Sectoral differences highlight the need for adaptive governance strategies, as a one-size-fits-all approach is insufficient. While IGO staff remain optimistic about their organizations’ ability to adapt, our study underscores the importance of reinforcing IGOs' in a rapidly shifting global landscape.