{"title":"A resource-based perspective on the regulatory welfare state: Social security in the United Kingdom","authors":"David P. Horton, Gary Lynch-Wood","doi":"10.1111/rego.12559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12559","url":null,"abstract":"The article provides a resource-based perspective on the polymorphic regulatory welfare state. It shows regulatory and fiscal tools applied in the UK social security sector place demands on claimants' resources (i.e., possessions, labor and data) and simultaneously alter behavior in relation to these resources. The analysis exposes an operation that generates new and increasing resource pressures for claimants, providing a deeper conceptualization of a regulatory welfare state. It offers a new perspective on why regulatory and fiscal arrangements perpetuate existing inequalities and suggests an increase in welfare problems as the regulatory welfare state intensifies resource pressures.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71417905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The governance of policy integration and policy coordination through joined‐up government: How subnational levels counteract siloism and fragmentation within Swedish migration policy","authors":"Gustav Lidén, Jon Nyhlén","doi":"10.1111/rego.12558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12558","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Modern welfare states struggle with fragmented policies and siloed governments, as well as with the need to deal with wicked problems. We argue that addressing such problems from the perspective of central government can be facilitated by notions of joined‐up government that, combined with vertical aspects of modern governance, provide a basis for analysis. To embark upon such challenges, we examine policy integration and policy coordination within the complex area of Swedish migration policies in light of the European migrant crisis. Through a content analysis of an extensive qualitative material (interviews and documents), we show that policy integration is weakly associated with joint objectives and decision‐making. As a contribution to prior knowledge in the field, we emphasize the unintuitive finding that counteracting siloism and fragmentation in Swedish migration policy is not achieved through coherent governance ranging across tiers, functions, and sectors but mainly at subnational levels through policy coordination relying on a bottom‐up approach.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136185164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eva Ruffing, Martin Weinrich, Berthold Rittberger, Arndt Wonka
{"title":"The European administrative space over time mapping the formal independence of EU agencies","authors":"Eva Ruffing, Martin Weinrich, Berthold Rittberger, Arndt Wonka","doi":"10.1111/rego.12556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12556","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout the past decades, the EU's agency landscape has continuously expanded in size and scope. In this article, we address the lack of longitudinal data on EU agencies' formal independence. We introduce a newly revised index to measure the formal independence of EU agencies from other EU institutions over time. Applying a rules-as-data approach we coded 206 regulations and amendments to develop a new dataset covering the formal independence of all 39 EU agencies from 1975 to 2022. This longitudinal overview provides first insights about the development of formal independence at the case and population levels. At the case level we identify frequent, albeit gradual reforms of EU agencies' independence. At the population level, we observe remarkable stability in overall independence, but find stark variation across different independence dimensions. Overall, EU-level principals have shifted over time from controlling individual decisions to controlling the agencies' general decision-making apparatus.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Clara Egger, Tommaso Caselli, Georgios Tziafas, Eugénie de Saint Phalle, Wietse de Vries
{"title":"Extracting and classifying exceptional COVID-19 measures from multilingual legal texts: The merits and limitations of automated approaches","authors":"Clara Egger, Tommaso Caselli, Georgios Tziafas, Eugénie de Saint Phalle, Wietse de Vries","doi":"10.1111/rego.12557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12557","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on the merits and limitations of computational legal text analysis by reflecting on the results of a research project documenting exceptional COVID-19 management measures in Europe. The variety of exceptional measures adopted in countries characterized by different legal systems and natural languages, as well as the rapid evolution of such measures, pose considerable challenges to manual textual analysis methods traditionally used in the social sciences. To address these challenges, we develop a supervised classifier to support the manual coding of exceptional policies by a multinational team of human coders. After presenting the results of various natural language processing (NLP) experiments, we show that human-in-the-loop approaches to computational text analysis outperform unsupervised approaches in accurately extracting policy events from legal texts. We draw lessons from our experience to ensure the successful integration of NLP methods into social science research agendas.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Realizing a blockchain solution without blockchain? Blockchain, solutionism, and trust","authors":"Gert Meyers, Esther Keymolen","doi":"10.1111/rego.12553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12553","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Blockchain is employed as a technology holding a solutionist promise, while at the same time, it is hard for the promissory blockchain applications to become realized. Not only is the blockchain protocol itself not foolproof, but when we move from “blockchain in general” to “blockchain in particular,” we see that new governance structures and ways of collaborating need to be developed to make blockchain applications work /become real . The qualities ascribed to (blockchain) technology in abstracto are not to be taken for granted in blockchain applications in concreto . The problem of trust, therefore, does not become redundant simply through the employment of “trustless” blockchain technology. Rather, on different levels, new trust relations have to be constituted. In this article, we argue that blockchain is a productive force, even if it does not solve the problem of trust, and sometimes regardless of blockchain technology not implemented after all. The values that underpin this seemingly “trustless technology” such as control , efficiency , and privacy and the story that is told about these values co‐shape the actions of stakeholders and, to a certain extent, pre‐sort the path of application development. We will illustrate this by presenting a case study on the Red Button ( De Rode Knop ), a Dutch pilot to develop a blockchain‐based solution that enables people who are in debt to communicate to their creditors that they are, together with the municipality, working on improving their situation, thereby requesting a temporary suspension from debt collection.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135352747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effects of transparency regulation on political trust and perceived corruption: Evidence from a survey experiment","authors":"Michele Crepaz, Gizem Arikan","doi":"10.1111/rego.12555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12555","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarly evidence of transparency's beneficial effects on trust and perceptions of corruption remains debated and confined to the study of public administration. We contribute to this debate by extending the study of its effects to transparency legislation concerning members of parliament (MPs), political parties, and business interest groups. In an online experiment conducted in Ireland with 1373 citizens, we find that transparency in political donations improves trust in political parties, while asset declaration for conflict of interest prevention reduces perceptions of corruption toward MPs. However, transparency in lobbying is found to have no impact on attitudes toward business interest groups. This supports the common expectation that transparency improves political trust and reduces perceptions of corruption, but also confirms its complex effects. The study improves our understanding of transparency beyond open government providing an evaluation of different regulatory policies aimed at making the activities of parties, MPs, and lobby groups transparent.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking the national quality framework: Improving the quality and safety of alcohol and other drug treatment in Australia","authors":"Simone M. Henriksen","doi":"10.1111/rego.12554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12554","url":null,"abstract":"The national quality framework (NQF) has been implemented to improve the safety and quality of alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment and provide a nationally consistent approach to treatment quality in Australia. At the same time, concerns have been raised that, in the absence of appropriate regulatory structures to support the NQF, the quality and safety of AOD treatment services cannot be guaranteed in Australia. An effective enforcement strategy is critical to the ability of the NQF to provide a nationally consistent approach to the delivery of AOD treatment in Australia. The monitoring and enforcement strategy proposed by the NQF encompasses two different mechanisms. For specialist AOD treatment providers in receipt of government funding, monitoring and enforcement of the NQF will occur via contractual arrangements. For providers not in receipt of government funding, monitoring and enforcement will be managed by regulatory mechanisms as decided by each jurisdiction. This proposed enforcement strategy raises the question of whether contractual arrangements are the most effective mechanism for monitoring and enforcing the NQF in publicly funded specialist AOD treatment providers. This paper considers whether a licensing regime may address the shortcomings that arise from the proposed strategy. It argues that the pluralistic approach to the monitoring and enforcement of the NQF will result in substantive differences in how the NQF is enforced both within individual jurisdictions and on a broader national level. A licensing regime, therefore, would be a more appropriate monitoring and enforcement strategy.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A comparison of stakeholder engagement practices in voluntary sustainability standards","authors":"Hamish van der Ven","doi":"10.1111/rego.12552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12552","url":null,"abstract":"Practices of stakeholder engagement vary widely across voluntary sustainability standard setters. This study examines how the sponsorship structure of standard setters affects the diversity of stakeholders included in consultations and the influence of stakeholder input on standards. I compare six sustainability standard setters through an original dataset of 7945 stakeholder comments submitted during public comment periods between 2012 and 2019 to answer two research questions. First, are some standard setters better at balancing stakeholder representation than others? And second, does stakeholder influence vary across standard setters? I find that industry-sponsored standards tend to attract more industry input than multistakeholder initiatives, but both tend to over-represent legacy stakeholders. I also find that sponsorship is a poor predictor of which comments will be influential. Comments that seek to weaken or clarify the rules in voluntary sustainability standards are more likely to exert influence irrespective of the sponsorship of the standard setter.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding patterns of stakeholder participation in public commenting on bureaucratic policymaking: Evidence from the European Union","authors":"Adriana Bunea, Sergiu Lipcean","doi":"10.1111/rego.12551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12551","url":null,"abstract":"What explains the levels and diversity of stakeholder participation in public commenting on bureaucratic policymaking? We examine a novel dataset on a stakeholder engagement mechanism recently introduced by the European Commission containing information about 1258 events organized between 2016 and 2019. We highlight the importance of administrative acts' characteristics and acknowledge the role of policy area type. Acts corresponding to early policy stages, broader in scope, less technical, and more explicit about feedback loop rules, that is, roadmaps, inception impact assessments and delegated acts, generate significantly more comments, from more diverse stakeholders, relative to legislative proposals, and draft implementing acts. Regulatory and distributive policies generate significantly more comments than interior and foreign policies. Diversity is significantly higher in distributive policies but only relative to foreign policies. We contribute by showing the power of administrative acts in influencing stakeholder participation and diversity across decision stages and policy areas and shaping bias in interest representation.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christian Elliott, Amy Janzwood, Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann
{"title":"Rethinking complementarity: The co-evolution of public and private governance in corporate climate disclosure","authors":"Christian Elliott, Amy Janzwood, Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann","doi":"10.1111/rego.12550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12550","url":null,"abstract":"In its 20 years of operation, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) has been enormously successful as a private governor of corporate climate risk disclosure. Despite an influx of potentially competitive government-led disclosure initiatives and interventions, the use of CDP's platform has nonetheless accelerated. To explain this outcome, we argue that public interventions augment the value of private governance for firms when the costs of compliance overlap, benefits of compliance with private rules are undiminished, and normalization helps kickstart positive feedback effects. These conditions of complementarity are made possible by private governors leveraging authority, access, and adaptability as public responses materialize. We illustrate our argument with two cases: the Non-Financial Reporting Directive in the European Union and the G20's Taskforce for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. In elaborating the conditions for complementarity beyond a functional division of governing labor, our study helps clarify how public and private governance co-evolve in a mutually reinforcing manner.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}