Andrea C. Bianculli

When Accountability Meets Regulation

This volume aims to contribute to the study of regulatory governance, today a growing area of research in public policy and public administration. The study of regulatory governance analyses the politics of regulation in the context of globalization, in which different levels are often entrenched in policy processes while multiple actors, public and private, play an increasing role in decision-making, thus having an impact on regulatory outcomes. The various chapters in this volume address a key issue in this area: the challenges of political accountability for the actors and institutions involved in regulatory governance.

International Networks as Drivers of Agency Independence The Case of the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council

This article discusses how the extension of network governance influences the de facto independence of regulatory agencies. Assuming that agencies gain de facto independence vis-à-vis the government when they experience a substantive increase in their reputation, we argue that agency participation in international governance networks contributes to strengthened agency domestic positions due to organizational learning and the expansion of expert knowledge involved in such interactions. Based on a case study of the Spanish nuclear regulatory agency (Nuclear Safety Council [CSN]), the article highlights how its involvement in international governance networks promoted the agency’s de facto independence during the 2000s.

Regional Integration and Health Policies: Regulatory Governance Challenges in Mercosur

The main aim of this chapter is to investigate to what extent Mercosur has provided windows of opportunities to policy innovation and promoted win-win cooperation initiatives, representing a value added to national health policies and thus contributing to more efficient systems of health governance in the region.

Varieties of Accountability Mechanisms in Regulatory Agencies

The expansion of independent regulatory agencies has been an exceptionally significant administrative phenomenon in the late XX century, contributing to the improvement of capabilities of contemporary states beyond their hierarchical organizational systems (Gilardi 2008; Jordana et al. 2011). However, the consolidation of these agencies has not followed a uniform pattern across sectors and countries over the years. While some experiences in recent decades have been very successful, others suggest some institutional failures. More specifically, it appears that an agency’s interaction with its audiences, and more generally its permeability within the context in which it operates, is fundamental for its capability to adjust to a changing reality, thus enabling its later development and consolidation (Dubash and Morgan 2013). For this reason, we believe that how these interactions operate, how they emerge, and particularly, under which conditions agencies are capable of acquiring sufficient political legitimacy, demand further scrutiny.

Regulatory governance regimes and interregionalism: exploring the dynamics of EU–Mercosur negotiations

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of interregionalism on regulatory governance. Specifically, it analyses an underexplored aspect of the negotiation process for an interregional agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur): to what extent and how has this given rise to particular forms of regulatory governance in Mercosur? The paper empirically explores the trade and cooperation agendas involved in trade facilitation and education, and argues that the long negotiation process between the EU and Mercosur has affected the ways in which different forms of regulatory governance are expressed. Still, these show variation across policy issues. Both the type of norm promoted and the capacity-building mechanisms envisaged create a particular ideational and material context, all of which affects the actor constellation and leads in turn to different regulatory governance regimes, yet within the same interregional negotiation process.

Some Comparative Conclusions on Regulatory Governance and Accountability

Recent decades have witnessed a general trend towards expanding regulations as instruments for governance, in parallel with the establishment of independent agencies responsible for the regulation of economic and social policy areas. Both the reasons for this expansion (Jordana and Levi-Faur 2004; Heritier and Rhodes 2011) and the specific institutional regulatory model thus devised have been the focus of extensive analyses (Christensen and Laegreid 2006; Jordana. 2011). Moreover, a myriad of scholars have also focused attention on the many relevant aspects of such a large and global transformation in the tools of government and the intricacies of governance. Yet, the consequences of these significant governance innovations — including regulatory instruments and institutions — on accountability issues have remained to a large extent under-researched (there are a few exceptions; see, for example, Papadopoulos 2003; Verschuere et al. 2006; Papadopoulos 2010; Christensen and Laegreid 2011; Follesdal 2011). This seems rather paradoxical as accountability has been portrayed as a relevant property that could contribute significantly to the provision of both wider democratic control and closer supervision by political representatives over these new modes of regulatory governance (Majone 1999). This turns out to be especially crucial given the non-elected character of those responsible in the agencies that operate ‘at arm’s length’ from government and often work under the protection of formal independence rules.

The unattainable politics of child benefits policy in Spain

Within the Southern European social model, Spain stands out because of the absence of a coherent child benefit policy. Spain not only constitutes a remarkable case of policy deactivation in the 1970s and 1980s, but also of a continuous series of instable decisions for more than three decades up until the present time. To account for the erratic child benefit policy in Spain since the country’s transition to democracy, this article goes beyond functionalist and institutional explanations. Our main contention is that intra-party configurations, namely different power resources and conflicting preferences about redistributive issues, prevented political parties from holding consistent and stable stances over this policy sector, even when in office. In turn, this triggered a non-decision-making dynamic in the public arena, setting the path for the non-development of child benefit policies in Spain. The argument relies on quantitative data on regulatory changes in child benefits in Spain and Portugal from 1976 to 2005, and qualitative evidence on the Spanish domestic policy process through a wide range of primary and secondary resources.

From free market to social policies? Mapping regulatory cooperation in education and health in MERCOSUR:

Regional cooperation has been an enduring feature of Latin American politics for more than half a century. With the turn of the century, regional organizations moved beyond traditional free trade issues to embrace cooperation in broader social policy areas. A recent literature relates this change to the left turn in the region, especially in South America. Yet, in practice, relevant differences persist in terms of how social policy is regulated at the regional level. This article looks precisely into this variation. In essence, it studies regulatory cooperation in the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) and thus offers a comparative assessment of the institutions and policy instruments devised in two social areas: education and health. Using an original dataset on the documents passed by MERCOSUR between 1991 and 2016, the findings provide evidence that the definition of the policy problem matters as this affects the institutional mechanisms and the policy instruments and strategies devised to address them. In this context, different policy problem definitions seem to account for two distinct emerging patterns of social regulatory cooperation in the Southern Cone.

Regional Organizations and Social Policy: The Missing Link

The capacity of European countries’ welfare systems to implement effective social policies has been challenged in the last decades by a number of factors such as changing demography, a rise in public indebtedness and the increasing mobility of peoples. Latin American countries have never achieved comparably efficient welfare systems; poverty and exclusion have been endemic problems in the region, but the increasing mobility of peoples constitutes a new challenge in the region as well. Despite the differences in their welfare systems and models of economic development and growth, European and Latin American governments share a commitment to social cohesion and to the regulation and provision of social policies to address inequalities; moreover, both regions are deeply engaged in regional cooperation and integration.

Regional Organizations and Social Policy in Comparative Perspective

The broad purpose of this book was to identify ways in which regional organizations in Europe and Latin America have opened up a space for the promotion and articulation of social policies at the regional tier of governance. Clearly, the regional level has not been the main space for the formulation and implementation of such policies. Still (and despite) their relatively less important role vis-a-vis national states and international organizations, regional organizations have deepened their agendas in this area during the last few years. Building on this observation, this volume aimed at finding out whether the EU, Mercosur and Unasur have regulated and provided social policy in the areas of social protection, higher education (HE) and health. In so doing, we also aimed at explaining the driving forces of these processes by looking, in particular, into the role of norms diffusion. In addition, the volume was intended to explore, from a more critical point of view, to what extent these regional organizations have provided a space for political struggle and contestation and, thus, have had an impact on social citizenship.