Regulation

Meaning and Empirical Content

Like many other political concepts, regulation is hard to define, not the least because it means different things to different people. The term is employed for myriad discursive, theoretical, and analytical purposes that cry out for clarification. It is also a highly contested term. For the Far Right, regulation is a dirty word representing the heavy hand of authoritarian governments and the creeping body of rules that constrain human or national liberties. For the Old Left, it is part of the superstructure that serves the interests of the dominant class and frames power relations in seemingly civilized forms. For progressive democrats, it is a public good, a tool to control profit-hungry capitalists and to manage social and ecological risks. For some, regulation is something that is done exclusively by government, a matter for the state and law enforcement, while for others, regulation is mostly the work of social actors who monitor other actors, including governments. State-centered conceptions of regulation define it with reference to state-made laws, while society-centered analysts and scholars of globalization tend to point to the proliferation of various forms of civil and business-to-business regulation.

For legal scholars, regulation is often a legal instrument, while for sociologists and criminologists, it is yet another form of social control. For some, it is the amalgamation of all types of laws—primary, secondary, and tertiary legislation—while [Page 2255]for others it is confined to secondary legislation. For economists of the Chicago school, regulation is usually a strategic tool used by private and special interests to exploit the majority. For institutional economists, regulation is less a strategic tool and more a constitutive element of the market; for them, it is often understood as the mechanism that constitutes property rights or even as a source of national competitiveness. The French Regulation School seems to have developed a similar institutional perspective but with a more critical tone and without the functionalist orientation of some English-speaking economists (Robert Boyer, 1990). Whereas scholars of public administration seem to perceive it with direct and in-depth reference to the scope of state authority and formal regulatory organizations, scholars of global governance tend to focus on standards and soft (nonbinding) norms. While some seem to think of the rise of regulation as yet another indication of the advance of neoliberalism and the retreat of the welfare state, others tend to see it at as a neo-mercantilist instrument for market expansion, high modernism, and social engineering. In European parlance, for most of the 20th century, regulation was synonymous with government intervention and, indeed, with all the efforts of the state, by whatever means, to control and guide the economy and society. This rather broad meaning of the term seems to have faded, and scholars now make an effort to distinguish rule making from other tools of governance and, indeed, from other types of policy instruments, such as taxation, subsidies, redistribution, and public ownership.

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