Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It. Edited by Daniel Carpenter and David A. Moss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 530p. $77.00 cloth, $27.99 paper.

Is government regulation a push for corporate environmental performance? Evidence from China

Rediscovering Institutions - The Organizational Basis of Politics

Reputation literature has provided crucial insights about the evolution of the US regulatory state. Daniel Carpenter’s influential account painstakingly demonstrates the relevance of reputation to ...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13501763.2019.1679227

The promise of bureaucratic reputation approaches for the EU regulatory state

We explore the democratic implications of a reputational account of bureaucratic authority. While an influential literature has examined the relevance of reputation-and mutual exchange between principals and agents in public organizations generally-the normative implications of these insights have largely escaped scrutiny. We discuss how reputation-building impacts both the ability and the motivation of principals to oversee administrative policymaking. We argue that reputation-sourced authority eschews ex ante incentives through the claims-making and maneuvering of bureaucrats as they develop reputations with audiences. At the same time, it de-legitimizes ex post oversight because monitoring and compliance must compete both with reputational authority and with resistance from the audiences that are the very sources of such authority.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/puar.13281

Reputation-Sourced Authority and the Prospect of Unchecked Bureaucratic Power.

This article examines why and how European Union agencies involve non-state stakeholders – such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business associations or trade unions – via three access instruments: public consultations; stakeholder bodies; and representation in management boards. We assess how the use of these instruments varies across agencies, and how they are linked to different motivations driving the demand for stakeholder participation. We present two alternative sets of hypotheses, first focusing on agencies’ need for information, organizational capacity and reputation, and second, considering stakeholder involvement as an instrument of legislative control. We draw on a new dataset of stakeholder involvement practices of the full population of EU agencies, compiled via document analysis and interviews. Our findings indicate that stakeholder involvement is a double-edged sword, contributing to agency accountability and control, but with an inevitable risk of dependence on the regul...

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Stakeholders wanted! Why and How European Union agencies involve non-state stakeholders

To design regulatory policies, agencies depend on information from the industries they are tasked to regulate. Therefore, agencies can organise consultations with the aim of obtaining information from different perspectives. This article focuses on stakeholder diversity in agency public consultations. We ask to what extent is information provided by stakeholders other than the regulated sector, such as other business interests, experts or nonbusiness interests? Stakeholder diversity is relevant as it may prevent agencies to become exposed to one-sided information and capture by specialised interests. Are there consultation design factors that foster consultation diversity? Or, is (a lack of) consultation diversity structurally shaped by the context in which an agency operates? Analysing a wide range of public consultations organised by European Union regulatory agencies indicates that most information agencies receive via consultations comes from regulated interests and that the limited participation of nonregulated interests is highly tenacious.

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Who feeds information to regulators? Stakeholder diversity in European Union regulatory agency consultations

Agencies consult extensively with stakeholders such as industry associations, nongovernmental organizations, and trade unions. One rationale for consultations is that these improve procedural legitimacy and lead to greater acceptance of regulatory outcomes by citizens and the regulated industry. While this presumption of a positive relation between stakeholder consultations and the legitimacy of agencies is widespread, research analyzing this relationship remains scarce. Using a survey experiment, we examine the effect of open and closed consultations on the acceptance of procedures and regulatory outcomes in the field of environmental politics. The results demonstrate that consultation arrangements positively affect the acceptance of decision-making procedures, especially when regulators grant access to different types of stakeholders. However, although the consultation arrangement itself does not directly affect acceptance of the regulatory outcome, procedural legitimacy matters, as it increases decision acceptance among individuals who are negatively disposed toward government regulation.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/rego.12323

Stakeholder consultations and the legitimacy of regulatory decision‐making: A survey experiment in Belgium

To facilitate stakeholder representation, European Union (EU) agencies use a range of procedures, including closed consultation or advisory committees and open or public consultations. For analysing what kind of stakeholders gain access to advisory committees, we compare these two particular procedures. Two theoretical perspectives guide this analysis. The first is a resource-based account, which emphasizes informational needs and leads to the expectation that not only regulated interests but also EU-level associations and European Commission expert group members will gain representation through closed consultations. The second is a norm-based perspective that stresses the importance for agencies to establish a credible reputation, leading them to balance interest representation. A systematic comparison of stakeholders represented in agency committee with those participating in open consultations demonstrates that regulated interests have no systematic advantage in gaining access to closed consultations. Instead, closed consultations may diversify interest representation and facilitate the involvement of non-business interests.

Sarah Arras

Papers

Stakeholders wanted! Why and How European Union agencies involve non-state stakeholders

Who feeds information to regulators? Stakeholder diversity in European Union regulatory agency consultations

Stakeholder consultations and the legitimacy of regulatory decision‐making: A survey experiment in Belgium

Access to European Union Agencies: Usual Suspects or Balanced Interest Representation in Open and Closed Consultations?