Regulation & Governance 

About: Regulation & Governance is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Corporate governance & European union. It has an ISSN identifier of 1748-5983. Over the lifetime, 637 publications have been published receiving 19014 citations. The journal is also known as: regulatory.

Can non-state global governance be legitimate? An analytical framework

Abstract: In the absence of effective national and intergovernmental regulation to ameliorate global environmental and social problems, “private” alternatives have proliferated, including self-regulation, corporate social responsibility, and public–private partnerships. Of the alternatives, “non-state market driven” (NSMD) governance systems deserve greater attention because they offer the strongest regulation and potential to socially embed global markets. NSMD systems encourage compliance by recognizing and tracking, along the market’s supply chain, responsibly produced goods and services. They aim to establish “political legitimacy” whereby firms, social actors, and stakeholders are united into a community that accepts “shared rule as appropriate and justified.” Drawing inductively on evidence from a range of NSMD systems, and deductively on theories of institutions and learning, we develop an analytical framework and a preliminary set of causal propositions to explicate whether and how political legitimacy might be achieved. The framework corrects the existing literature’s inattention to the conditioning effects of global social structure, and its tendency to treat actor evaluations of NSMD systems as static and strategic. It identifies a three-phase process through which NSMD systems might gain political legitimacy. It posits that a “logic of consequences” alone cannot explain actor evaluations: the explanation requires greater reference to a “logic of appropriateness” as systems progress through the phases. The framework aims to guide future empirical work to assess the potential of NSMD systems to socially embed global markets.

Constructing and contesting legitimacy and accountability in polycentric regulatory regimes

Abstract: The legitimacy and accountability of polycentric regulatory regimes, particularly at the transnational level, has been severely criticized, and the search is on to find ways in which they can be enhanced. This paper argues that before developing even more proposals, we need to pay far greater attention to the dynamics of accountability and legitimacy relationships, and to how those in regulatory regimes respond to them. The article thus first seeks to develop a closer analysis of three key elements of legitimacy and accountability relationships which it suggests are central to these dynamics: The role of the institutional environment in the construction of legitimacy, the dialectical nature of accountability relationships, and the communicative structures through which accountability occurs and legitimacy is constructed. Second, the article explores how organizations in regulatory regimes respond, or are likely to respond, to multiple legitimacy and accountability claims, and how they themselves seek to build legitimacy in complex and dynamic situations. The arguments developed here are not normative: There is no ‘‘grand solution’’ proposed to the normative questions of when regulators should be considered legitimate or how to make them so. Rather, the article seeks to analyse the dynamics of legitimacy and accountability relationships as they occur in an attempt to build a more realistic foundation on which grander ‘‘how to’’ proposals can be built. For until we understand these dynamics, the grander, normative arguments risk being simply pipe dreams – diverting, but in the end making little difference.

Governance without a state: Can it work?

Abstract: In this article we explore how much state is necessary to make governance work. We begin by clarifying concepts of governance and the “shadow of hierarchy” and we follow this clarification with a brief overview of empirical findings on governance research in developed countries. We then discuss the dilemmas for governance in areas of limited statehood, where political institutions are too weak to hierarchically adopt and enforce collectively binding rules. While prospects for effective policymaking appear to be rather bleak in these areas, we argue that governance research has consistently overlooked the existence of functional equivalents to the shadow of hierarchy. We assert that governance with(out) government can work even in the absence of a strong shadow of hierarchy, we identify functional equivalents to the shadow of hierarchy, and we discuss to what extent they can help overcome issues of legitimacy and effectiveness in areas of limited statehood.

Transnational Business Governance Interactions: Conceptualization and Framework for Analysis

Abstract: This special issue demonstrates the importance of interactions in transnational business governance. The number of schemes applying non-state authority to govern business conduct across borders has vastly expanded in numerous issue areas. As these initiatives proliferate, they increasingly interact with one another and with state-based regimes. The key challenge is to understand the implications of these interactions for regulatory capacity and performance, and ultimately for social and environmental impact. In this introduction, we propose an analytical framework for the study of transnational business governance interactions. The framework disaggregates the regulatory process to identify potential points of interaction, and suggests analytical questions that probe the key features of interactions at each point.

Subprime catalyst: Financial regulatory reform and the strengthening of US carbon market governance

Abstract: The 2008 financial crisis has had an important, but neglected, impact on carbon market governance in the United States. It acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a domestic coalition that drew upon the crisis experience to demand stronger regulation over carbon markets. The influence of this coalition was seen first in the changing content of draft climate change bills between 2008 and 2010. But the coalition's more lasting legacy was its role in shaping the content of, and supporting, the passage of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd–Frank bill) in July 2010. Although that bill was aimed primarily at bolstering financial stability, its derivatives provisions strengthened carbon market regulation in significant ways. This policy episode demonstrates new patterns of coalition building in carbon market politics as well as the growing links between climate governance and financial regulatory politics. At the same time, the significance of these developments should not be overstated because of various limitations in the content and implementation of the Dodd–Frank bill, as well as the waning support for carbon markets more generally within the US since the bill's passage.