Jacint Jordana

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 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.

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.

Toward a Latin American Regulatory State? The Diffusion of Autonomous Regulatory Agencies Across Countries and Sectors

Abstract This article explores the sweeping restructuring of the state in Latin America. Regulatory governance through autonomous agencies that was long confined to the United States (at the country level) and to central banking (at the sectoral level) is evolving from “best practice” to a hegemonic institution grounded in a new convention. Our dataset reveals an explosive growth of regulatory agencies across different sectors and nations in Latin America. We draw a major distinction between sectoral and national patterns of diffusion that challenges deeply entrenched research designs that treat the nation as the exclusive unit of analysis. Two particular insights exemplify the productivity of our approach. First, it allow us to move the discussion from the American origins of the regulatory state to sectoral origins, namely the centuries of central bank independence in Europe. Second, we found that while the first stages of the diffusion of regulatory authorities in the region display sectoral patterns, the later stages have significant national characteristics. This is a paradoxical result in an age which celebrates the demise of the nation-state David Levi-Faur acknowledges research for this paper during a year’s stay in RegNet, the Australian National University. He is grateful for the outstanding support of John Braithewaite and the RegNet community. Previous versions of this article were presented in seminars at the IDB (Washington, DC) and the CIDOB (Barcelona, Spain). We thank participants of these seminars for their comments.

Governing telecommunications and the new information society in Europe

Introduction - regulating telecommunications and enforcing the information society in Europe, Jacint Jordana. Part 1 The telecommunications policy framework in Europe: the institutional transformation of telecommunications between Europeanization and globalization, Volker Schneider barriers to entry in European telecommunications markets, Martin Cave the relationship between national and European regulation of telecommunications, Mark Thatcher the persistence of telecommunications policies in national states - Portugal and Spain in the European arena, Jacint Jordana normative foundations of electronic communications policy in the European Union, Johannes Bauer. Part 2 Creating new policies for a European information society: internet@Europe - overcoming institutional fragmentation and policy failure, Raymond Werle the European regions and the information society policy instruments, Antonio Alabau new technology-based firms in information and communication technology industries -a policy perspective, Massimo G. Colombo and Marco Delmastro European national platforms for the development of the information society, David Sancho the dilemmas of an inevitable relationship - democratic innovation and the information and communication technology, Joan Subirats.

Regulatory Capitalism: Policy Irritants and Convergent Divergence

The concluding part of this volume may be the right place to discuss the issue of the outcomes of regulatory capitalism. The analysis so far has only touched on the outcomes, and even here we cannot offer more than some suggestions on how to approach the issue. Not only is the new order still in the making, but its outcomes are unlikely to be straightforwardly positive or negative. The greater the change, the more difficult it is to control and capture its outcomes. Consequently, what may seem at first to be a victory of one side or of a certain idea may develop into an ambiguous outcome that shifts the balance of power in unforeseen ways. Outcomes in the center (or wherever the process of diffusion begins) may differ remarkably from outcomes in the periphery; and convergence on the general framework of regulatory capitalism may be accompanied by significant divergence in practices, applications and analyses across both sectors and nations. In short, one should not expect the ideas and institutions of regulatory capitalism to fall on fertile ground and be welcomed by caring guardians in all countries and sectors.

Which Internet Policy? Assessing Regional Initiatives in Spain

We examine the effect of public policy on the growth of Internet use. Using a decentralized country—Spain—as an example, we compare the 17 Spanish regions to test different Internet policy designs, taking into account the quality and number of specific programs promoted by regional governments, as well as the presence or absence of strategic planning in each region. We treat the percentage of Internet users as a dependent variable to compare its diffusion in different territories. Our findings show that educational levels and economic differences explain about half of the variations observed. Furthermore, the regional policies play a significant role in explaining regional variations. We investigate which public policy instruments are more significant for the development of the Internet, and find that focused policy intervention and complex policy initiatives are more significant than other policy instruments in explaining the increase in the percentage of Internet users.

Transgovernmental Networks as Regulatory Intermediaries: Horizontal Collaboration and the Realities of Soft Power

This article explores and elucidates the activities of transnational networks as regulatory intermediaries. Specifically, I examine their role in the regulation of banks, as far as they facilitate exchanges between global regulators (GRs)—such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision or the Financial Stability Board—and local regulators (LRs), such as national regulatory agencies or legislatures. I find that transgovernmental network intermediaries produce benefits both for GRs, which employ them to disseminate their rules; and for LRs, which use them to obtain influence, advice, and information. Networks promote collaborative intermediation horizontally, without compromising sovereignty, and require only soft organizational structures with low operational costs. Network intermediation is a key ingredient in facilitating local regulatory activities and in providing tools and cognitive resources to LRs. Network intermediaries blur the global-local boundary, however, as some of their members operate as LRs and simultaneously participate directly in GRs.

Multiple Crises and Policy Dismantling in Spain: Political Strategies and Distributive Implications

This article examines the distributive implications of dismantling strategies applied to public policies in order to confront the multiple crises that have taken place in Spain since 2008. The hypotheses concern the logic of dismantling, while considering different theoretical alternatives. First, it is suspected that the configuration of social groups and business interests affects how dismantling strategies are chosen: the corporatist state selectively protects its closer clientele. Second, the characteristics of policies and instruments are discussed, with the suggestion that there was a preference for dismantling those that were less costly for the politicians. To assess these interpretations, variations across policy sectors in Spain during the period 2008–2012 are analysed and different areas of regulatory and expenditure policies are considered.