The Board of Trade and the regulatory state in the long 19th century, 1815–1914

Abstract

How does regulatory statehood develop from the regulatory work which governments have always done? This article challenges conventional views that regulatory statehood is achieved by transition to arm's length agencies and that it replaces court‐based enforcement or displaces legislatures in favor of less accountable executive power. To do so, we examine the major 19th‐century surge in development of micro‐economic regulatory statehood in Britain, which had followed more gradual development in early modern times. We show that when the transformation of the Board of Trade is understood properly, a richer appreciation emerges of how regulatory statehood is institutionalized generally and of British state‐making in particular. To demonstrate this, we introduce a novel conceptual framework for analyzing and assessing change on multiple dimensions of regulatory statehood, distinguishing depth of regulatory capacity and regulatory capability along six dimensions.