Enriching the RIT framework

Abstract

The purpose of this volume is to theorize the role of intermediaries in the regulatory process and to trace their roles empirically across a wide range of settings. While we began with a spare Regulator Intermediary Target (RIT) theoretical framework, we also extended that conception -- often drawing on lessons learned from the substantive papers of the contributors. We have already indicated some of these connections in the introductory framework paper (Abbott, Levi-Faur and Snidal 2017); this conclusion develops them further, extracting additional lessons from the empirical cases. It also identifies further implications for regulatory analysis from the volume as a whole. Doing so reinforces the message that intermediaries are essential to expanding the reach and effectiveness of regulation, but introducing intermediaries also creates new regulatory twists and complications. We begin this conclusion by reminding ourselves that, whereas regulation is often treated as a technical problem, it is an inherently normative enterprise. Introducing intermediaries with their different goals makes the normative issues even more apparent. We then provide a brief overview of the range of intermediaries and other regulatory actors covered in this volume, highlighting the wide variation in who the intermediaries are, what they do and what goals they pursue. Recognizing that intermediaries have their own goals makes their selection an important issue, and we consider that next. Selection also opens up an analysis of the pathologies that surround RIT processes, and of possible ways of overcoming them. Finally, although the RIT model is more complicated than the standard principal-agent (P-A) model, it is still much simpler than the world. We close by discussing the tradeoffs involved in using simple models to understand complex realities, and argue that RIT provides a valuable baseline for more complicated analyses of regulatory processes