Regulation in Isolation? The Management of Autonomy by Boards of Regulatory Agencies

The members of the boards of regulatory agencies have strongly varying professional backgrounds. Some bring their political experience to the table whereas others have strong expertise on the sector regulated. Why is this the case? Institutionalists identify important differences among distinct country types in this regard where corporatist countries more likely to prioritise sectoral expertise over political experience compared to other countries. Policy students offer a partially competing explanation and identify functional differences across sectors and domains related to the Lowi-Wilson types of cost-benefit distributions of the policies enacted by the agency. Drawing on resource dependency theory, we focus on the particular organisational ‘needs’ of regulators, and assess the empirical validity of both sets of explanations. We rely on original data of the professional background of agency board members in a large number of countries and a range of sectors. We find both explanations to have some validity but note a number of under-explored circumstances, such as NPM-traditions, to mediate the theoretically identified explanations. Our findings help us better understand how the ‘displacement’ of politics towards insulated institutions empowers particular parts of contemporary political-bureaucratic elites.