Governing Research Quality: Regulatory Strategies in English and Israeli Higher Education

Across policy domains, regulation is commonly associated with enforcing compliance and preventing harm. Far less attention has been paid to contexts in which regulation is aimed not at deterrence but at the promotion of quality- a contested, multidimensional, and difficult-to-observe objective. Academic research is a paradigmatic case: while all actors endorse the goal of "high-quality research", its meaning varies across disciplines and over time, and outcomes cannot be prescribed ex ante. In such settings, regulatory governance relies heavily on intermediary actors, funding architectures, and incentive structures that shape research behavior indirectly. This paper analyzes how regulatory strategies for governing research quality have evolved and been institutionalized in England and Israel between 2000 and 2025. Although both countries operate advanced research systems exposed to similar global pressures for excellence, they have developed markedly different configurations of regulatory authority, evaluation mechanisms, and funding instruments. The study asks: (1) how regimes for regulating research quality developed over time in each system; (2) how different regulatory strategies are combined and layered in practice; and (3) what explains the observed variation between an audit-intensive, performance-based regime in England and a capacity-building, incentive-oriented regime in Israel. The paper advances a theoretical framework that conceptualizes "regulation for quality" as a constitutive mode of governance that shapes what counts as excellence through configurations of rule-making authority, regulatory intermediaries, evaluative practices, and incentive mechanisms. Three ideal-typical regulatory strategies are distinguished: self-regulation, enhanced self-regulation, and performance-based regulation. These strategies are not treated as mutually exclusive, but as logics that can be layered and hybridized within national regimes. The findings show that while both systems rely on professional peer judgment and intermediary bodies, England’s regime centers on audit-based performance measurement and stratified funding allocation, whereas Israel’s regime emphasizes long-term capacity building through block grants, infrastructure investments, and international grant circuits. These differences are explained by contrasting institutional trust structures, budgetary governance arrangements, and regulatory ideologies regarding the appropriate balance between autonomy and accountability. The paper contributes to regulatory governance scholarship by extending regulatory strategy analysis to domains where quality, rather than compliance, is the primary regulatory objective, and by demonstrating how different combinations of intermediaries and incentive structures shape national research systems over time.