Why critics are wrong about the outcomes of TTIP but right to protest against it

The ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’ (TTIP) is the subject of increasingly fierce debate. Whilst some see the proposed US/EU trade deal as a vital boost for ‘free trade’, others fear we could cede control of everything, from the food on our plates to our public services, to ‘big business’. Dr Eva Heims argues it’s unlikely that the outcomes of TTIP will be as extreme as either side thinks, but its potential to perpetuate a global economic order already skewed towards large corporations should be taken seriously

How participatory regulation is changing the nature of policymaking

Regulators are often shielded from political pressures, with decisions made on the basis of technical expertise rather than public opinion. Yet as Hanan Haber and Eva Heims explain, recent years have seen a growing trend for ‘participatory regulation’ across Europe, where citizens actively participate in the decision-making process. Drawing on a new study, they argue we are increasingly seeing a move away from regulation based on expertise to regulatory decisions that try to capture a range of different viewpoints and interests

Covid-19 vaccines and the competition between independent and politicised models of regulation

The regulatory approaches used to approve Covid-19 vaccines vary substantially across different countries. While some states assign responsibility for vaccine approval to independent regulatory agencies, politicians in other states have greater scope to influence decision-making. Eva Heims and Slobodan Tomic write that the current push to roll out vaccination programmes as quickly as possible is shining a light on competition between these independent and politicised models of regulation

Managing European risks without a European State: transnational coordination between regulators in the European Union

Governmental authorities are known for zealously protecting their ‘turf’, which is usually seen to inhibit them from coordinating their work with rival authorities. In the EU, however, national regulators often engage proactively in coordination with sister authorities in the forum of EU regulatory bodies. This is puzzling if one considers that this means that national authorities actively support EU bodies –potential rivals- in their work. The thesis hence examines what determines the coordinative behaviour of national regulators at a transnational level in the European Union. It analyses the engagement of UK and German authorities in transnational coordination in the regulatory regimes of drug safety, maritime safety, food safety, and banking supervision. The study demonstrates that coordinative behaviour is driven by strategic considerations of national regulators that want their coordination activities to add value to their own work, rather than being determined by their professional norms, functional pressures or the ‘shadow of hierarchy’, as stipulated in the EU governance literature. Their strategic assessments of whether they are getting something out of transnational activities are informed by the interpretative filters of the social relations they are embedded in at the domestic level. They are also fundamentally shaped by the institutional frameworks provided by the tasks of the EU regulatory bodies in which national regulators come together. This explains variation of coordination patterns across policy areas and national regulators, which the EU governance literature has not accounted for. The argument of the thesis implies that the engagement with coordination can be linked to an enhancement –rather than a loss– of bureaucratic autonomy. By identifying the determinants of coordinative behaviour at a transnational level, this thesis hence also seeks to contribute to our understanding of the conditions in which transnational administration functions. This, in turn, is vital for understanding of how capacity to manage cross-border risks is created in the absence of a ‘European’ state

Regulatory co-ordination in the EU: a cross-sector comparison

The paper examines what drives national regulators’ attitudes towards and engagement with EU regulatory co-ordination as facilitated by EU agencies and offices. It suggests that a bureaucratic politics perspective can counteract shortcomings of explanations conventionally advanced in the EU governance literature by showing that national regulators’ attitudes towards co-ordination are driven by the aim to protect their turf. This is empirically demonstrated by a comparison of attitudes to co-ordination across maritime safety and food control authorities in the UK and Germany that draws on original document analysis and semi-structured interviews with British, German and EU officials. UK and German food control authorities have a positive attitude towards EU co-ordination, but the maritime safety authorities contest it. While the food control authorities use EU co-ordination to enhance their bureaucratic turf vis-à-vis lower-level authorities, the maritime safety authorities perceive EU coordination to threaten their established position in the International Maritime Organization

Mental health service areas in Switzerland

Objectives: Small area analysis is a health services research technique that facilitates geographical comparison of services supply and utilization rates between health service areas (HSAs). HSAs are functionally relevant regions around medical facilities within which most residents undergo treatment. We aimed to identify HSAs for psychiatric outpatient care (HSA-PSY) in Switzerland. Methods: We used HSAr, a new and automated methodological approach, and comprehensive psychiatric service use data from insurances to identify HSA-PSY based on travel patterns between patients' residences and service sites. Resulting HSA-PSY were compared geographically, demographically and regarding the use of inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services. Results: We identified 68 HSA-PSY, which were reviewed and validated by local mental health services experts. The population-based rate of inpatient and outpatient service utilization varied considerably between HSA-PSY. Utilization of inpatient and outpatient services tended to be positively associated across HSA-PSY. Conclusions: Wide variation of service use between HSA-PSY can hardly be fully explained by underlying differences in the prevalence or incidence of disorders. Whether other factors such as the amount of services supply did add to the high variation should be addressed in further studies, for which our functional mapping on a small-scale regional level provides a good analytical framework