Principles based regulation: risks, challenges and opportunities

Presented at the Banco Court, Supreme Court of New South Wales

Responsiveness and legitimacy in the regulation of the press

Last night Sir Alan Moses delivered a speech at the LSE on the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and the future of press regulation. In it he cited the work of LSE’s Pro Director for Research, Julia Black. Here she argues that Moses and IPSO need to remember their role is to protect the public, not the regulated

Learning from regulatory disasters

Regulatory disasters are catastrophic events or series of events which have significantly harmful impacts on the life, health or financial wellbeing of individuals or the environment. They are caused, at least in part, by failures in, or unforeseen consequences of, the design and /or operation of the regulatory system put in place to prevent those harmful effects from occurring. Regulatory disasters are horrendous for those affected by them. Because of that we have an obligation to learn as much from them as we can, notwithstanding all the well-known challenges related to policy and organisational learning. The article focuses on five distinct and unrelated regulatory disasters which, although they occurred in apparently unrelated domains or countries, contain insights for all regulators as the regulatory regimes share a common set of elements which through their differential configuration and interaction create the unique dynamics of that regime. In the regulatory disasters analysed here, these manifest themselves as six contributory causes, operating alone or together: the incentives on individuals or groups; the organisational dynamics of regulators, regulated operators and the complexity of the regulatory system in which they are situated; weaknesses, ambiguities and contradictions in the regulatory strategies adopted; misunderstandings of the problem and the potential solutions; problems with communication about the conduct expected, or conflicting messages; and trust and accountability structures

‘Says who?’ liquid authority and interpretive control in transnational regulatory regimes

The article explores the notion of liquid authority by examining the ways in which the central organisations in three transnational regulatory governance regimes do or do not attempt to establish interpretive control over the norms that they issue: the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO), and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The need to ‘solidify’ their authority ranges across their regulatory functions; this article focuses on just one of those functions: interpretation. In focusing on how these regulators seek to exercise interpretive control, the article seeks to show how liquid authority can crystallise. Further, the article develops the notion of liquid authority by arguing that the establishment, exercise and continual maintenance of authority in transnational regulatory regimes, which are characterised by liquid authority as they lack a formal, legal base, are fundamentally linked to the issue of legitimacy. It argues in turn that legitimacy, and thus authority, is endogenously produced, a fact which exogenous, normative assessments of legitimacy can overlook. The article argues that regulators play an active role in their own legitimation – in creating, exercising and maintaining their legitimacy, and in turn their authority, and that their success or otherwise in doing so is linked in part to their functional effectiveness, but that transnational regulators face a legitimacy paradox: they depend in part on such effectiveness for their legitimacy. The article supplements the ‘anatomical’ analysis of liquid authority with an understanding of the physiology of legitimation

Quantifying Carbonyl Sulfide and Other Sulfur-Containing Compounds Over the Santa Barbara Channel

Carbonyl sulfide (OCS) is emitted to the atmosphere through the outgassing of ocean surface waters. OCS is also the primary source of sulfur-containing compounds in the stratosphere and contributes to the formation of the stratospheric sulfate layer, an essential controller of the radiative balance of the atmosphere. During the 2016 Student Airborne Research Program (SARP), 15 whole air samples were collected on the NASA DC-8 aircraft over the Santa Barbara Channel. Five additional surface samples were taken at various locations along the Santa Barbara Channel. The samples were analyzed using gas chromatography in the Rowland-Blake lab at UC Irvine, and compounds associated with ocean emissions including OCS, dimethyl sulfide (DMS), carbon disulfide (CS2), bromoform (CHBr3), and methyl iodide (CH3I) were examined. Excluding OCS, the vertical distribution of marine tracers that were analyzed showed dilution with increasing altitude. For OCS, the surface samples all exhibited elevated concentrations of OCS in comparison to samples taken from the aircraft, with an average of 666 ± 26 pptv, whereas the average concentration of OCS in the aircraft samples was 581 ± 9 pptv. 2016 Surface samples were compared to surface samples from SARP campaigns between 2009-2015 taken near or within the 2016 study region. The 2009-2015 samples exhibited an average OCS concentration of 526 ± 8 pptv. It is evident that the 2016 surface samples measured higher concentrations of OCS than ever recorded during previous SARP campaigns and in comparison to global averages: 525 ± 17 pptv in the Northern hemisphere and 482 ± 13 pptv in the Southern hemisphere (Sturges et al., 2001). OCS emissions should be measured using surface samples if emission estimates from the ocean are to be evaluated since measurements from the aircraft (500 ft) are not sufficiently capturing surface concentrations. Additionally, OCS enhancements seen in 2016 had never before been detected by surface samples, revealing a potential phenomenon at work causing the elevation during this year’s campaign

To build a better world after Covid-19, now is the time to transform how we think about social science commercialisation

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 lockdown many opportunities have arisen to rethink how and for whom our societies operate. In this post, Julia Black argues that social sciences can play a unique role in the post-COVID-19 recovery by forging new relationships with business and commerce and outlines how initiatives, such as the Aspect network, are seeking to bridge the divide between the social sciences and business

Constitutionalising regulatory governance systems

How to ensure, in democratic states, that those to whom power has been delegated act in line with constitutional norms and values is a perennial, and much explored, question. This article suggests that in analysing how constitutional actors seek to govern regulatory institutions we should ‘flip’ the perspective, and not just look (down) at regulatory systems from a constitutional perspective, but also look (up) at constitutions from a regulatory perspective. This flipped perspective will be used to conceptualise constitutions not from the starting point of established constitutional, legal or political theory but from a particular regulatory theory, that of decentred or polycentric regulation, and to explore the different ways in which ‘regulators are regulated’ through the interplay of the constitutional governance system with the regulatory systems it creates. We can thus think of a constitutional governance system as both constituting and regulating, or constitutionalising, a regulatory system through the goals and values each seeks to pursue, the techniques, organisations and individuals through which each acts, the particular sets of ideas or cognitive and epistemological frameworks those actors bring, and with a continual need both for, and in constant pursuit of, trust and legitimacy in the eyes of those on whose behalf they purport to govern

Green shoots emerge to commercialise social sciences

An ecosystem of people, processes and investment is bringing into being new forms of commercialisation, writes Julia Blac

Flexible AC transmission system compensation on a utility transmission system

Power system security can be increased by the use of flexible AC Transmission System devices, FACTS, in transmission systems experiencing high power flows. This thesis presents an analysis of one of these devices, namely, a Thyristor Controlled Series Compensator, TCSC, as applied to the Nevada Power Company 230kV southern transmission network. The methodology for choosing the appropriate location for the device and equations to accurately analyze the TCSC are developed. The analysis of the utility network is divided into three stages: (1) development of a benchmark, pre-TCSC case, establishing the real and reactive power transfer capabilities of the network, (2) identification of the critical contingencies at increased power transfers, and (3) evaluation of a TCSC device to mitigate the identified problem area. Results indicate that the application of a TCSC to the McCullough-Arden #2 230kV transmission line will increase bulk power transfers into this area by 108 MW while mitigating a line outage and releasing increased power flows on a critically loaded line. This study also shows that the power system modeled will reach a steady-state condition within 18 cycles after the TCSC is inserted

Driving priorities in risk-based regulation: what’s the problem?

Both risk-based and problem-centered regulatory techniques emphasise giving priority to matters that are serious and important. In the case of both risks and problems, however, issues of identification, selection and prioritisation involve inescapably normative and political choices. It is important, therefore, to understand why regulators target the risks and problems that they do; which factors drive such choices; and how regulation is affected when these factors pull in similar or opposite directions. Such an understanding provides a fresh framework for thinking about the challenges of both risk-based and problem-centered regulation. The analysis presented here does not oppose either risk-based or problem-centered regulation, but it illustrates why neither is as straightforward as simple calls for ‘better regulation’ may suggest, and it proposes ways in which key aspects of those challenges may be addressed