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 for government organizations. This article examines to what extent individuals’ partisan alignmentwith the governing coalition, and perceptions of its actions as a threat to democracy, shape attraction to government jobs. Findings are based on a two-stage survey with 1,861 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 1,211of the respondents. Against the politically neutralexplanations of previous research, we showthat 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 thiseffect.

This paper places the arguments about the rise of the regulatory security state in a broader perspective of regulatory governance and regulatory state literatures. It suggests that the regulatory security state is one morph of the regulatory state. It does not replace any other morph and indeed it is only partly new. I clarify the terminology around the ‘old’ and new’ regulatory (security) state and suggests how to think about the concept of the RSS from a perspective of the state as a risk manager. The first part clarifies the idea of the ‘regulatory state’ and its origins. The second part distinguishes between the old regulatory state and the new regulatory state, and therefore also distinguishes between the old and the new RSS. The third part suggests that the regulatory state can be a positive, liberal or illiberal state. The fourth part theorizes the RSS as a risk state. Together these clarifications allow a more theoretically rich framework for the study of security governance from a regulatory governance perspective.

This article analyzes the emergence of new forms of regulatory intermediation in three different modes of governance. It compares the emergence of the European data protection and Facebook’s content moderation regimes and raises three questions: How did self-regulation in the European data protection and Facebook’s content moderation regimes evolve over time? What are the similarities and differences in the design of these regimes? And what are the strengths and weaknesses of these regimes in promoting credible self-regulation? To answer these questions, the article process-traces the development of the two regimes and shows how intermediaries and intermediation are used in order to systematically and progressively increase credible governance via market, network, and hierarchical modes of governance. By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of these three modes of governance, it is concluded that they can be used as blueprints for designing hybrid modes of enhanced self-regulation. In this way, the article introduces ways to capture and study new technologies of regulation that facilitate, manage, and improve the credibility of self-regulation in complex polycentric governance regimes, and well beyond.

The regulation of market activity has been largely dominated by governmental command-and-control regulatory design (C&C), which was seen as the safest way to protect the public from potential harm by firms. In recent years, in an effort to move to more relaxed and less burdensome regulation, alternative regulatory tools have been developed, tools that rely on firms or other private actors in the various stages of regulation (self, or smart, regulation). Since these alternatives present a reduction in the extent to which the government regulates markets, they could have a negative impact on citizens’ trust in firms and willingness to use them, especially when it comes to new technologies that could pose a risk to users. Using two experimental surveys (n = 1,195), we examine the extent to which different regulatory designs affect citizens’ willingness to trust a firm in the field of financial technologies (Fintech). The results show that trust in the firm decreases with alternatives to traditional state regulation. However, when trust in the regulator is high, then trust in the regulated firm increases even when an altentaive to C&C is introduced and the regulator relies on pledges, suggesting that the path to relieving regulatory burden lies in increasing the trustworthiness of public regulators.

Over the recent decades, regulatory agencies have become very common in most parts of the world. They have emerged as specialized public institutions, taking over regulatory and supervisory tasks across multiple policy areas and sectors. Their diffusion constitute a vast institutional innovation that has arrived on the shores of traditional administrative bureaucracies, highlighting some specific characteristics. In particular, organizational autonomy and political delegation are some of the most distinctive traits they exhibit when they are established. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a cartography of such expansion, comparing early-adopter sectors and countries to those late-comers, discussing where the institutional model reached completion and where remained as an unreached goal, and also examining to what extent they share or not share the same common characteristics, beyond existing similarities in the tasks they carry on. To the extent they proliferate in democratic settings particularly is also discussed here. We examine these questions vis-à-vis a data set of regulatory agencies that includes data on their creation (1966-2017) and their autonomy (2010), in 17 sectors and over 100 countries.

It is widely argued that command-and-control regulation is a burdensome, inefficient, and illiberal form of governance. In recent decades, many efforts have been made to find alternatives that could protect and enhance public interest in a less costly, less legalistic, less punitive, and less paternalistic manner. These alternatives include various instruments under the umbrella of smart and self-regulatory regimes. However, it is still unclear how such alternatives affect citizens' trust in regulated market actors. Using two experimental surveys (n=1195), we examine the extent to which nine different regulatory designs affect citizens' willingness to trust a hypothetical Fintech company. The results show that citizens' trust increases with the existence of a state regulator and decreases with self-regulatory regimes and deregulation. We also find an increase in trust when the state regulator relies on pledges rather than strict oversight, provided that the regulator is perceived as trustworthy. These results suggest that governmental command-and-control regulation may be more beneficial to both the public and firms than is often assumed, as more government regulation may mean more trust in the market.

Regulation & Governance was founded 15 years ago based on a vision and an ambitious set of goals laid out by the founding editors, John Braithwaite, Cary Coglianese, and David Levi-Faur (see their introduction to the first issue: “Can regulation and governance make a difference?”, 2007). Fifteen years later, the current editors of Regulation & Governance, in dialogue with the founders, reflect on that vision, on the journal's accomplishments, and on the next 15 years of Regulation & Governance. Our reflections are based on our joint, comprehensive overview of regulatory governance scholarship in different subfields – the decision to not refer to individual works here is deliberate and intended to reflect the inclusiveness of our notion of the field. We mark the journal's anniversary at a moment when multiple cataclysmic events are straining regulation and governance as never before: a global pandemic and the social, economic, and biological devastation trailing in its wake; national, institutional, and personal reckonings with the legacy and the lived reality of systemic racism, colonialism, and white supremacy; challenges to democratic governance; extreme and growing economic inequality; rising tides of authoritarianism and violent extremism around the globe; a looming climate emergency that threatens life on this planet as we know it. Regulatory governance is indispensable for confronting these crises. Yet, at this critical moment, regulation itself – from mask requirements to low carbon fuel policies – has become the object of virulent political backlash against governments that attempt to address these issues. As societies emerge from pandemic restrictions, the normative and legal order also is being tested by rising violent crime rates and other aggressive behaviors. In this sense, the original vision for Regulation & Governance is more relevant than ever. But, 15 years later, these challenges prompt us to ask once again, what difference can regulation and governance make?

Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (R) and a rule-taker or target (T). We set out an agenda for the study of regulation as a three- (or more) party relationship, with intermediaries (I) at the center of the analysis. Intermediaries play major and varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation, from monitoring the behavior of regulatory targets to building communities of assurance and trust. After developing the basic regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, we discuss important extensions and variations of the model. We then discuss the varieties of regulatory capture that may appear where intermediaries are involved.

Regulation, that is, rulemaking, rule monitoring, and rule enforcement, is both a key policy and legal instrument and a pillar of the institutions that demarcate political, social, and economic lives. It is commonly defined as a sustained and focused control mechanism over valuable activities using direct and indirect rules. Most frequently, regulation is associated with the activity of public independent regulatory agencies, designed to promote economic, social, risk-management, integrity, or moral goals. Since the 1990s, more and more states worldwide are establishing such agencies and placing more emphasis on the use of authority, rules, and standard-setting, thus partially displacing earlier emphasis on public ownerships and directly provided services. Alongside this rise of the “regulatory state,” the expansion of regulation is also reflected in the rapidly growing variety of regulatory regimes that involves nonstate actors, such as private regulation, self-regulation, and civil regulation. Regulatory regimes can be explained and assessed from three theoretical perspectives: public-interest theories, private-interest theories, and institutional theories. Each perspective shines a different light on the motivations of the five regulatory actors: rule-makers, rule intermediaries, rule-takers, rule beneficiaries, and citizens. Over the years, diverse regulatory strategies evolved, including: prescriptive strategies that attempt to mandate adherence in precise terms what is required from the rule-takers; performance-based strategies that set in advance only the required outcomes; and process-based strategies that attempt to influence the internal incentives and norms of rule-takers. Although it appears that regulation is here to stay as a keystone of society, it still faces fundamental challenges of effectiveness, democratic control, and fairness.

This article provides an historical and theoretical account of the emerging regulatory welfare state, which is greatly understudied in contemporary regulatory and welfare research. We analyze the interplay between the welfare state and the regulatory state in an age in which regulation is expanding through liberalization, privatization, and the new public management of social services. We then provide a multi faceted framework for understanding the regulatory welfare state and discuss its implications in terms of 1) the normative social goals of the state; 2) the ways in which social policy is delivered through institutions; and 3) the implications of the framework for individuals’ rights and duties.