The Role of Regulatory Agencies in Framing Public Problems: An Empirical Analysis

This paper sheds light on the role of independent regulatory agencies in framing public problems. It is well acknowledged that regulatory agencies are becoming key actors in the policy process. To this extent, a common understanding regarding the delegation of regulatory agencies relates to the fact that they solve problems rather than defining them. Although the literature on framing and on regulatory agencies is abundant, studies questioning the combination of these two phenomena are still scarce.In this paper, a specific ‘framing index’ is developed to measure the role of thirty-seven regulators in framing public issues in two sectors, namely environmental protection and food safety. This measurement is applied to a cross-national and cross-sectorial fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). In conclusion, this article suggests that the way in which several public problems are defined in different countries depends on the role that national regulatory agencies play in framing.