Regulatory Governance: What, Where, How and Why?

The study of regulatory governance has expanded tremendously since its inception. Nowadays, the field has expanded to encompass perspectives from several disciplines, including political science, psychology, sociology and law. Substantively, it has focused on various approaches and modes of regulation, as well as the differences and particularities of separate polities and different sectors or addressees of regulation. Current developments, such as authoritarian and populist leaders, protectionism and skepticism towards technocratic decision-making, have given renewed urgency to seemingly settled questions. This section aims to cover all these aspects and developments and invites papers exploring the what, where, how and why of regulation. ‘What’ refers to the many addressees of regulation and the economic and social sectors where regulation occurs. AI and the technology sector offer new challenges for regulators to act fast and to balance innovation with human rights. While simultaneously, infrastructure and climate regulation require enduring long-term commitment from regulators. This section invites papers that address these and other sector- or regulatee-specific characteristics and offers a platform to transcend subfields that focus on, among others, energy, finance and technology regulation. Under this theme, we invite papers for three panels: Regulating new technologies, Regulating competition and Regulating market actors. ‘Where’ refers to the context of regulation. Regulation occurs on a domestic level as well as through supranational and transnational organizations. Each of these contexts brings its own logic and legal implications. Implementation of EU regulation involves different actors and mechanisms than domestic regulation. Studies have increasingly also grappled with the question of how regulators (should) operate in a context where authoritarianism and populism play a role. Regulation and regulators need to reconcile their duty to follow political decision-making with the principles of the rule of law. These differ more and more as authoritarian leaders come to power. This section invites papers that focus on these and other context-dependent explanations in studying regulatory governance. In particular, we invite papers for the panels on Comparing regulatory agencies in the EU, Democratic challenges of regulatory governance and Regulatory decision-making. ‘How’ covers a large part of the study of regulation. Many studies compare different instruments, mechanisms and regimes and show how they affect regulatory outcomes such as compliance, trust from key stakeholders and consumer protection. Mechanisms such as stakeholder participation and impact assessments also have a profound effect on how effective, legitimate and just regulation is. Developments such as regulation through intermediaries and platforms have also gained attention as a subject of study. This section invites papers on all of these approaches and in particular those that compare across them or those that look at a broad range of regulatory outcomes. Papers can be submitted to one of two panels: Stakeholder involvement in regulatory governance and New tools in regulatory governance. Studies focused on ‘why’ take a step back and concern the field of regulatory governance itself. New theories and new methods emerge that offer researchers new insights on what regulation is and how it can be studied. Advances in computational power and a boom in data availability allow questions to be answered that were previously too ambitious or provide new insights into debates taken to be settled. Adopting insights from neighboring fields allows us to look at our field with a novel perspective. This section invites papers for a panel on Theoretical innovations in regulatory governance and a panel on Affective regulatory governance.