David Levi-Faur

The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism

This article analyzes the rise and diffusion of the new order of regulatory capitalism. It offers an analytical and historical analysis of relations between capitalism and regulation and suggests that change in the governance of capitalist economy is best captured by reference to (1) a new division of labor between state and society (e.g., privatization), (2) an increase in delegation, (3) proliferation of new technologies of regulation, (4) formalization of interinstitutional and intrainstitutional arrangements of regulation, and (5) growth in the influence of experts in general, and of international networks of experts in particular. Regulation, though not necessarily directly by the state, seems to be on the increase despite efforts to redraw the boundaries between state and society.

The Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism in Latin America: Sectoral and National Channels in the Making of a New Order:

This article analyzes the sweeping restructuring of the state in Latin America and the consequent institutionalization of a new regulatory order. The analysis is grounded in an original database that covers the creation of regulatory agencies and their reform in nineteen countries and twelve sectors over the period from 1979 to 2002. The authors’ data capture both the national and the sectoral patterns of the rise of the new order, and the authors distinguish between (1) national patterns of diffusion, whereby the number of prior regulatory authorities within a country determines the probability of the establishment of new authorities in that country; and (2) sectoral patterns of diffusion, whereby the number of prior regulatory authority in the same sector in other countries determines the probability of the establishment of new regulatory authority in that sector. The results coincide with a growing body of literature that emphasizes the role of contagious diffusion and shed some new light on sectoral and national channels of diffusion.

The Politics of Regulation in the Age of Governance

This book suggests that the scope and breadth of regulatory reforms since the mid-1980s and particularly during the 1990s, are so striking that they necessitate a reappraisal of current approaches to the study of the politics of regulation. The authors call for the adoption of different and fresh perspectives to examine this area.

The politics of liberalisation: Privatisation and regulation-for-competition in Europe's and Latin America's telecoms and electricity industries

.  This article sheds some light on the interaction between politics and learning in the diffusion of liberalisation. It does so by specifying the conditions and ways in which politics and learning interact and thus sustain cross-national and cross-sectoral variations in the spread of liberalisation. The process of liberalisation is analysed against data from 32 European and Latin American countries and two sectors. The indicators employed cover the issue of privatisation as well as regulatory reform. An analytical framework is presented that, for the first time, allows a systematic quantitative examination of the contrasting predictions of the Policy Sector Approach (PSA) and the National Patterns Approach (NPA). Four different combinations of variations and similarities across sectors and nations are identified and explained. These explanations are grounded in actor-centred historical institutionalism. The empirical evidence points to the failure of Latin America to become ‘European’ despite the appearance of sweeping and comprehensive liberalisation. In addition, the article demonstrates how rational actors act in different institutional environments while accommodating the process of learning to their advantage, and how their actions are constrained by different historical legacies of state formation and varied levels of risks and rewards inherent in different sectors.

The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Agencies: Channels of Transfer and Stages of Diffusion

The autonomous regulatory agency has recently become the ‘appropriate model’ of governance across countries and sectors. The dynamics of this process is captured in our data set, which covers the creation of agencies in 48 countries and 16 sectors since the 1920s. Adopting a diffusion approach to explain this broad process of institutional change, we explore the role of countries and sectors as sources of institutional transfer at different stages of the diffusion process. We demonstrate how the restructuring of national bureaucracies unfolds via four different channels of institutional transfer. Our results challenge theoretical approaches that overemphasize the national dimension in global diffusion and are insensitive to the stages of the diffusion process. Further advance in study of diffusion depends, we assert, on the ability to apply both cross-sectoral and cross-national analysis to the same research design and to incorporate channels of transfer with different causal mechanisms for different stages of the diffusion process.

Regulatory networks and regulatory agencification: towards a Single European Regulatory Space

The European regulatory space has been expanding rapidly since the 1990s. The double movement towards a single market on the one hand and a Single European Regulatory Space on the other is evident almost everywhere. A new regulatory architecture is emerging and is expressed in the extension of regulatory capacities beyond the European Commission via two major forms of institutionalization: agencies and networks. This paper explores the politics and architecture of the institutionalization and administrative rationalization of the EU regulatory space and demonstrates (a) how agencies replace networks in a process that might best be called ‘agencification’; (b) how agencies compete with networks and are often able to create, employ, and control them, creating what might best be called ‘agencified networks’; and (c) how networking empowers agencies creating a new type of regulatory organization that might best be called a ‘networked agency’.

The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Agencies

The autonomous regulatory agency has recently become the “appropriate model” of governance across countries and sectors. The dynamics of this process are captured in the authors’ data set, which covers the establishment of agencies in 48 countries and 15 sectors for the period 1966-2007. Adopting a diffusion approach to explain this broad process of institutional change, the authors explore the role of countries and sectors as sources of institutional transfer at different stages of the diffusion process. They demonstrate how the restructuring of national bureaucracies unfolds via four different channels of institutional transfer. The results challenge theoretical approaches that overemphasize the national dimension in global diffusion and are insensitive to the stages of the diffusion process. Further advance in study of diffusion depends, the authors assert, on the ability to apply both cross-sectoral and cross-national analysis to the same research design and to incorporate channels of transfer with different causal mechanisms for different stages of the diffusion process.

On the “Net Impact” of Europeanization The EU’s Telecoms and Electricity Regimes between the Global and the National

This article examines the outcome of the EU policy process from various comparative perspectives in an effort to distinguish the “net effects” of EU membership and EU-level regimes from more general—perhaps global—processes of change. It argues that the major features of liberalization would have been diffused to most if not all member states even in the absence of the European Commission, other agents of supranationalism, and EU-level intergovernmental commitment to liberalize. This is not to suggest that Europeanization does not matter but that it matters in less obvious and perhaps in less critical ways than is frequently assumed. The argument is supported by comparative empirical analysis of the spatial and temporal diffusion of liberalization since the 1980s and of nationalization since the late 19th century.

The Governance of Competition: the interplay of technology, economics, and politics in European Union electricity and telecom regimes

This study raises two basic questions. How is competition in telecom and electricity governed? What explains the considerable differences in their governance regimes? To answer these questions the study compares the economic and technological characteristics of the sectors; deconstructs the telecom sector into two micro-regimes (terminal type-approval and networks interconnection) and the electricity sector into three (generation, transmission, distribution); defines intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, liberalism, and etatism for each of the five segments of the sectors; distinguishes three different kinds of competition ‐ deregulated competition, regulation-ofcompetion, and regulation-for-competition; and deconstructs the European policy game into three different games (sectorial, national, and union). The European Union’s policy choices are: supranational governance in telecom and intergovernmental governance in electricity. The introduction of competition as an administrative process leaves considerable room for entrepreneurship and political choice by European nation-states and strengthens their regulation capacities. Differences in the governance regime for telecom and electricity are explained by a state-centered multi-level approach. * This paper was written during my stay as a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research with the financial support of the Netherlands Research Council (N.W.O.). Valuable support was given to this research by the people of the International Institute of Energy Law at the University of Leiden, who made their document center and library accessible to me, and by over fifteen EU policy makers and lobbyists who were generous enough to discuss various issues of the liberalization and Europeanization process with me. I am also indebted to Susanne Schmidt and the referees of this journal for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

The Rise of the British Regulatory State: Transcending the Privatization Debate

This article reviews three recent books that explore the social and political foundations of the regulatory changes in the governance of British society and economy. Beyond privatization, there is increasing delegation to autonomous agencies, formalization of relationships, and proliferation of new technologies of regulation in both public and private spheres. Sociolegal, public administration, and political economic perspectives can help explore the forces that shape these new institutions. The notion of regulatory society accompanies the rise of the regulatory state.