The Role of Trust in Regulatory Regimes

Abstract

The role of trust in regulation and regulatory regimes has been under debate for many years. Regulation exists because providers of goods and services may create social risks for citizens or the environment. Because individual citizens do not have the competences or access to the information needed to make good judgements about the trustworthiness of these providers to manage these risks appropriately, regulatory regimes are put in place to provide assurance. This works as long as citizens trust regulators. It has been argued that for regulators/inspectorates to be trusted by citizens, they should distrust regulatees. If regulatees could be trusted, inspections are not needed. And after each serious incident where citizens are put at risk, the call for more and stricter regulation is strong. At the same time, empirical research has shown that the more regulatees believe that inspectors trust them, the higher their compliance (Braithwaite and Makkai 1994); and higher regulatees’ trust in the regulator also leads to higher voluntary compliance (Murphy 2004). Gunningham and Sinclair (2009) showed that when regulators started to act from distrust, this started a vicious cycle leading to bad relationships and worse compliance. In this panel we investigate this seemingly contradictory role of trust in regulatory relations, both theoretically and empirically. We also investigate the origins, role and consequences of trust in other relations regulators are engaged in. Regulators have relations with other regulators as they coordinate their actions towards regulatees. To what extent and how does trust enhance or deepen cooperation between regulators? Regulators also are in relationship with their political and administrative principals. Does trust impact upon of the regulators’ autonomy towards their principals, and how? How do regulators create trustworthiness towards these actors and to what effect? Edward Elgar Publishing is interested in publishing a book on this theme and we hope to attract high-quality papers for it

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