Accountability, Expertise and Trust in Regulatory Agencies. Implications of representation: diversity within regulatory domains and actors

In regulatory governance literature it is highlighted the importance of trust in regulatory agencies as a key feature for the well-functioning of the regimes and, more broadly, the markets. In particular, high levels of trust in regulatory agencies fosters the relationships between regulators and regulatees, also enhancing the performance and the quality of the regulators’ outputs. Although the literature has already explored several mechanisms explaining high trust in regulatory agencies, this paper seeks to establish a nexus between accountability, expertise and trust. In fact, accountability and expertise are two key properties which shape the way regulators are perceived by the regulatees. Whereas accountability is key to overcome potential democratic deficit and to strengthen legitimacy, expertise is central to policy-making processes and it reflects a major organizational resource and capacity to face with (technical) regulatory policies. By comparing three sector, data protection, food safety and finance in eight European countries, this paper elaborates the idea that it is the interplay between accountability and expertise which determine the level of trust toward regulatory agencies. To do so, this paper relies on three novel datasets. The first, the TiGRE survey, provides a comprehensive measurement of the stakeholders’ level of trust in regulators. The second is also a novel dataset which measure the level of formal and informal accountability of 49 regulators. The third dataset measure the degree of ‘expertise’ of the regulatory agencies. Hence, building upon the literatures on trust, accountability and expertise in regulatory agencies, this paper seeks to contribute to the literature on public governance by emphasizing the role accountability and expertise as crucial to trust and, therefore, to the well functioning of the regimes.