Xavier Fernández-i-Marín

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.

EI competencies as a related but different characteristic than intelligence

Amid the swarm of debate about emotional intelligence (EI) among academics are claims that cognitive intelligence, or general mental ability (g), is a stronger predictor of life and work outcomes as well as the counter claims that EI is their strongest predictor. Nested within the tempest in a teapot are scientific questions as to what the relationship is between g and EI. Using a behavioral approach to EI, we examined the relationship of a parametric measure of g as the person’s GMAT scores and collected observations from others who live and work with the person as to the frequency of his or her EI behavior, as well as the person’s self-assessment. The results show that EI, as seen by others, is slightly related to g, especially for males with assessment from professional relations. Further, we found that cognitive competencies are more strongly related to GMAT than EI competencies. For observations from personal relationships or self-assessment, there is no relationship between EI and GMAT. Observations from professional relations reveal a positive relationship between cognitive competencies and GMAT and EI and GMAT for males, but a negative relationship between EI and GMAT for females.

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.

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.

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 Power of EI Competencies Over Intelligence and Individual Performance: A Task-Dependent Model

Prior research on emotional intelligence (EI) has highlighted the use of incremental models that assume EI and general intelligence (or g) make independent contributions to performance. Questioning this assumption, we study EIs moderation power over the relationship between g and individual performance, by designing and testing a task-dependent interaction model. Reconciling divergent findings in previous studies, we propose that whenever social tasks are at stake, g has a greater effect on performance as EI increases. By contrast, in analytic tasks, a compensatory (or negative) interaction is expected, whereby at higher levels of EI, g contributes to performance at a lesser extent. Based on a behavioral approach to EI, using 360-degree assessments of EI competencies, our findings show that EI moderates the effect of g on the classroom performance of 864 MBA business executives. Whilst in analytic tasks g has a stronger effect on performance at lower levels of EI competencies, our data comes short to show a positive interaction of EI and g in affecting performance on social tasks. Contributions and implications to research and practice are discussed.