The Varieties of Capitalism literature suggests that economic institutions reflect the mode of coordination of a country’s market actors (Hall and Soskice 2001). The literature on regulatory capitalism has shown that there has been a general use of independent regulatory agencies across different modes of capitalism (Jordana et al. 2011). However, literature is yet to analyse IRA variation within the same coordination model and the relationship between coordination and IRAs in a diachronic perspective. Are there significant de jure differences in IRAs across sectors? How do IRAs designs evolve over time? If so, what contributes to those cross sectorial and longitudinal differences?
This work examines the evolution of formal independence and accountability of IRAs in a cross-sectorial and diachronic perspectives within the same economic coordination model, by using Portugal as a case study and examining its eleven IRA. Portugal has proven difficult to categorize in the VoC literature, having been labelled as ambiguous (Hall and Soskice 2001), a mixed market economy (Hall and Gingerich 2009) or part of a Southern European Capitalism (Amable 2003). However, it is an understudied case in the field of regulation studies. This work applies a mixed methodology: it usea previously applied quantitative measurement (Gilardi 2002, 2005, 2008) for the descriptive analysis of IRAs evolution, but resorts to QCA to find the explanatory factors. In addition, it adds new information and updates existing data.
