Current Legal Problems 

Abstract: This article addresses three basic analytical questions: what is 'decentring regulation', what is 'self regulation' and how does it fit in the decentring analysis, and what meaning is given to 'regulation' to allow it analytically to be 'decentred' - how do we know 'decentred regulation' when we see it? Decentring is a term which is often used to encompass a number of notions, and has both positive and normative dimensions. It is used to express the observation that governments do not, and proposition that they should not, have a monopoly on regulation and that regulation is occurring within and between other social actors: there is 'regulation in many rooms'. Decentring is also part of the globalisation debate on the one hand, and of the debate on the developments of mezzo-levels of government (regionalism, devolution, federalism) on the other. Decentring is also used in a positive sense to describe the consequence of a particular analysis of social systems, in which politics and administration are, like law or economics, are described as being self referentially closed sub-systems of society, incapable of observing other systems except through their own distorted lenses; decentring is thus the removal of government and administration from the conceptual centre of society. Finally, developing from these observations (and mixing metaphors), decentring can be used, positively and normatively, to express 'de-apexing': the removal of the state from the conceptual hierarchy of state-society, and the move to a heterarchical relationship in which the roles of governors and governed are both shifting and ill-defined. The themes of 'decentring' are reflected in a changed understanding of regulation. In that changed understanding, self regulation plays a particular role both in practical policy debates and in more conceptual discussions. The role ascribed to self regulation, however, differs quite fundamentally in those debates. For some self regulation is the solution to the limits of 'centred' regulation; for others it is the challenge that has to be addressed: regulation of self regulation is the new challenge. The prescription is for governments to regulate self regulation in a 'post regulatory' way. But what conception of 'regulation' is thereby entailed? The article deconstructs the notion of 'regulation' and attempts to build an understanding of 'regulation' that can withstand 'decentring'.

Abstract: “Better Regulation” is afoot in Europe After several transatlantic regulatory topics such as the precautionary principle, genetically mod climate change, Europe and America now appear to be converging on for regulation In a process of hybridization, European institutions are b Regulation” reforms from both the US approach to regulatory review usin analysis and from European member states’ initiatives on administrative co simplification; in turn the European Commission is helping to spread t among the member states In many respects, the Better Regulation initia salutary reforms, such as wider use of regulatory impact assessments and a unnecessary bureaucracy In other respects, the European initiative spea Procrustean deregulation than of better regulation Meanwhile the Europ still needs to establish the institutional infrastructure needed to succeed Th argues that the European program of “Better Regulation” is well-founde even better if it adopted several strategies: enlarging the scope of benefit-cost analysis toward a broader, “warmer” and more evenha these tools, with greater attention to multiple risks; moving beyond a narrow cutting administrative costs or simplification for their own sake, tow Better Regulation in Europe – JB Wiener – draft of 17 September2006 Forthcoming in Current Legal Problems (2006) Better Regulation in Europe