The Politics of Regulatory Oversight: How Analysts Expand, Shield, or Bend Their Mandate While Reviewing Regulations

Abstract

Regulatory review—assessing the legality, use of evidence, and correct calculation of costs and benefits in regulations before they are enacted—is a core function of regulatory oversight bodies. In principle, reviewing aims to improve the effectiveness of regulations through economic rationality, tools, and methods. In practice, the work of oversight bodies occurs amid the politics of the rulemaking process and can be a way for the executive to control the regulatory agenda. Based on a 13‐month ethnography of Mexico's regulatory oversight body, I examine how analysts enact the technical and legal requirements of regulatory improvement while facing political tensions and interference. Using negotiated order theory, I show how analysts respond to political attention, conflict, or interference by expanding, shielding, or bending their mandate and conducting their work accordingly. Reviewing to improve regulations takes on different meanings and forms, allowing analysts to protect their work, organization, and techno‐legal mandate in the long term. The article contributes to a better understanding of regulatory review and oversight bodies. More importantly, it draws attention to how workers make ambitious statecraft projects like regulatory improvement possible by continuously reconciling the legal, technical, and political dimensions of their work.