What is regulation? An interdisciplinary concept analysis

The concept of regulation is believed to suffer from a lack of shared understanding. Yet, the maturation of the field raises the question whether this conclusion is still valid. By taking a new methodological approach towards this question of conceptual consolidation, this study assesses how regulation is conceived in the most-cited articles in six social science disciplines. Four main conclusions are drawn. First, there is a remarkable absence of explicit definitions. Second, the scope of the concept is vast, which requires us to talk about regulation in rather abstract terms. Third, scholars largely agree that ‘prototype regulation’ is characterised by interventions which are intentional and direct – involving binding standard-setting, monitoring and sanctioning – and exercised by public-sector actors on the economic activities of private-sector actors. Fourth, while there is considerable variation in research concerns, this variation cannot be attributed to disciplinary differences. Instead, our findings support the portrayal of the field as interdisciplinary, including a shared conception of regulation

Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting the Research on Campaign Spending and Citizen Initiatives

The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue that the conventional finding is driven by the endogenous nature of campaign spending: initiative proponents spend more when their ballot measure is likely to fail. We address this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach to analyze a comprehensive dataset of ballot propositions in California from 1976 to 2004. We find that both support and opposition spending on citizen initiatives have strong, statistically significant, and countervailing effects. We confirm this finding by looking at time series data from early polling on a subset of these measures. Both analyses show that spending in favor of citizen initiatives substantially increases their chances of passage, just as opposition spending decreases this likelihood

Dynamic political contexts and power asymmetries: the cases of the Blue Nile and the Yarmouk Rivers

This paper explores the evolving patterns of hydropolitical relations in the dynamic contexts of Yarmouk and Blue Nile Rivers in comparison. The analysis aims at shedding light over the complex implications that recent political and social changes have aroused for the water disputes between Jordan and Syria on the one hand, and Ethiopia and Egypt on the other. In both basins, cooperative efforts toward the integrated management of transboundary waters have been only partially effective and largely undermined by the perpetuation of unilateral actions by riparian states. In the case studies, the lack of a basin-wide vision over the control and use of shared waters has resulted in disputes among the basin states and ultimately in an unsustainable, unfair, and unwise utilization of the resources. This paper argues that a substantive and effective integration of national water policies is unlikely to occur, unless power asymmetries are properly addressed in order to overcome the likelihood of hegemonic regimes

Negative incentive steering in a policy network

In this article the process of developing a policy for the recent comprehensive retrenchment operation in the Dutch university system is analysed from a theoretical point of view on decisionmaking. The article especially addresses the question whether some empirical evidence can be found for the rationalist view of collective decision-making, which states that a process of social communication should eventually lead to a unanimous and rational consensus concerning the selection of the optimal policy.\ud \ud The actual analysis concerns the way a retrenchment policy has been developed in a process of social communication between the most important actors: the Minister of Education and Science and the thirteen Dutch universities. It is assumed that the various communicative linkages between these actors can be interpreted as a policy network in which both governmental and non-governmental actors operate.\ud \ud The article concludes that in the Dutch university policy-network a complicated balance of interdependencies exists and that several sub-networks can be distinguished. It is also concluded that the Minister, while recognizing the interdependencies in the network, was able to use a special kind of (negative) incentive, inducing the universities to act as he wished.\ud \ud This negative incentive steering, however, also persuaded the universities to go to the utmost in their consultation efforts, thus trying to reach the rationalist ideal of collective decision-making. The final conclusion therefore is that the rationalist view of collective decision-making does not appear to be unrealistic. The article ends with a warning against a common mistake made regarding the normative appearance of the rationalist perspective

The politics of regulatory enforcement and compliance: Theorizing and operationalizing political influences

There is broad consensus in the literature on regulatory enforcement and compliance that politics matters. However, there is little scholarly convergence on what politics is or rigorous theorization and empirical testing of how politics matters. Many enforcement and compliance studies omit political variables altogether. Among those that address political influences on regulatory outcomes, politics has been defined in myriad ways and, too often, left undefined. Even when political constructs are explicitly operationalized, the mechanisms by which they influence regulatory outcomes are thinly hypothesized or simply ignored. If politics is truly as important to enforcement and compliance outcomes as everyone in the field seems to agree, regulatory scholarship must make a more sustained and systematic effort to understand their relationship, because overlooking this connection risks missing what is actually driving regulatory outcomes. This article examines how the construct of “politics” has been conceptualized in regulatory theory and analyzes how it has been operationalized in empirical studies of regulatory enforcement and compliance outcomes. It brings together scholarship across disciplines that rarely speak but have much to say to one another on this subject in order to constitute a field around the politics of regulation. The goal is to sharpen theoretical and empirical understandings of when and how regulation works by better accounting for the role politics plays in its enforcement

Measuring Organizational Power: Resources and Autonomy of Government Agencies

Although power is a major concern of organization theory, little research has focused on the horizontal dimension of power between organizations at relatively equal hierarchical levels. This study attempts to fill that void by operationalizing organizational power for 127 federal government agencies. The derived measure is subjected to tests for internal and external validity by empirically testing one promising theory of agency power.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Community action: value or instrument? An ethics and planning critical review

The community concept has maintained a constant and growing interest in urban studies and many related fields. The origin of this continuing interest seems to derive from the importance of the concept of community within diverse forms of political language and interpretations within different planning practices. In this contribution, through the analysis of different ethical and planning theories, we want to provide an update framework on community action. According to this objective, the argumentation will proceed through a literature review on four ethics theories and three key aspects related to spatial planning, as well as matching this theoretical analysis with exemplifying practices. The final objective is to provide an original analysis on drivers and outcomesof different forms of community, raising general issues that refer to spatial planning, social organization and regulation

The Presidency and the Executive Branch in Latin America: What We Know and What We Need to Know

The presidential politics literature depicts presidents either as all- powerful actors or figureheads and seeks to explain outcomes accordingly. Th e president and the executive branch are nonetheless usually treated as black boxes, particularly i n developing countries, even though the presidency has evolved into an extremely complex branch of government. While these developments have been studied in the U nited States, far less i s known in other countries, particularly in Latin America, where presi dential systems have been considered the source of all goods and evils. To help close the knowledge gap and explore differences in policymaking characteristics not only between Latin America and the US but also across Latin American countries, this paper s ummarizes the vast literature on the organization and resources of the Executive Branch in the Americas and sets a research agenda for the study of Latin American presidencies.Fil: Bonvecchi, Alejandro. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Departamento de Ciencia Política y Estudios Internacionales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Scartascini, Juan Carlos. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo; Estados Unido