Regulatory Governance - Still relevant in the contemporary age?

The era of the regulatory state - characterised by an emphasis on technocratic agencies, distanced from elected politics, private delivery of public services and contractualisation - has witnessed considerable challenge. Whether it is the rise of populist politics, technological change, or societal expectations, the performance of regulatory regimes has come under considerable pressure. Regulation is no longer seen as part of the policy solution, but part of the problems. As a consequence, we may be witnessing a period of transformational change, characterised by intellectual exhaustion in the worlds of research on the one hand, and growing calls for change in the world of practice in particular. This section therefore invites papers and panels that explore the trajectory of regulatory governance over the past thirty years. One central theme invites interest in the ways in which the relationship between elected politics and non-majoritarian institutions may have changed, whether related to the delegation of competences to regulatory agencies, or to changing priorities in terms of leadership selection or agency staffing more generally. This theme also calls for theoretical and empirical explorations into the actual behaviour of regulatory and other ‘delegated’ agencies. A second theme relates to the observed limits and capacities of regulatory governance instruments, in particular in view of changing political priorities (e.g. addressing the climate crisis), changing technologies and economic circumstances (e.g. energy market volatility). In addition, this theme invites the consideration of third party and co-regulatory strategies. Furthermore, the complexification of regulatory objective raises further questions as to the suitability of regulatory governance as traditionally conceived for modern statehood. Other possible themes of interest may include the interaction between regulatory governance and technological innovation, especially in the field of AI. New circumstances may also provide new grounds for regulatory governance to expand, as for example, with the increasingly urgent need to regulate the distribution of content by social networks. Beyond a focus on these potentially transformative challenges to regulatory governance, this section also considers how ‘old’ challenges to regulatory governance have developed in the first quarter of the 21st century. These offer cross-cutting challenges to the themes identified above. Concerns about the legitimacy of regulatory governance remain at the heart of the debates about democratic governance in the 21st century. The need for coordination and coherence due to the fragmentation of regulatory power remains a fundamental challenge, especially in the face of rising private corporate power and transboundary crises. The evolving political, economic and technological context may reinforce these ‘old’ challenges but also provide new opportunities to address them.