Regulatory Governance at the crossroads: old and new challenges

The last few years have been marked by a series of political, economic, social, ecological, sanitary and technological disruptions. Fundamental and transformative social and economic changes are shaping the regulatory state: whether these are due to the rise of populist politicians and parties in parliaments and governments, the impact of global financial, economic and sanitary crises, to the new geopolitical tensions, the growing urgency of climate concerns with the rise of ‘net zero’ policies or to the fundamental transformation of economic and social life in view of artificial intelligence and other technological disruptions. This transformative and evolving context comes with new challenges and places regulatory governance under stress. Following decades of a dominant policy consensus as to the design and operation of regulatory institutions and policies, the last few years have witnessed considerable demand for a fundamental reconsideration, if not transformation in the ways in which regulatory governance is being conceived and implemented. They point to concerns about the intellectual and political ‘exhaustion’ of regulatory governance in being ‘accepted’ as legitimate and effective problem-solving device for political problems. 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. 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). A further theme of interest may be the stress placed on regulatory governance by rapidly changing regulated economic activities as a result of technological innovation. At the same time, these new circumstances may also provide new grounds for regulatory governance to expand, such as the widespread calls for the regulation of content on 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. Normative concerns about regulatory governance in terms of legitimacy, accountability and participation, 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 globalization of crises and private power. The evolving political, economic and technological context may reinforce these ‘old’ challenges but also provide new opportunities to address them. Considerable attention has been, for example, paid to the possibility of stakeholder engagement arising from new technologies of participation. This section invites panels and papers dealing with the challenges and implications for regulatory governance that arise from these fundamental societal changes and how regulatory governance has adapted to these pressures and evolved in response to the new demands. List of potential panels 1. Reconceptualizing de facto autonomy: Unpacking multi-actor influence and variation across policy areas? Kerem Mehmet Coban, Kadir Has University, Istanbul 2. Analysing the circular economy from a regulatory governance angle Sandra Eckert (Aarhus U.), Orr Karassin (Open University of Israel), Yves Steinebach (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen) 3. Trust and distrust in regulatory governance: relevance, roles, explanations and effects (potentially two panels) (Co)convernors: Martino Maggetti (U. Lausanne), Koen Verhoest (U. Antwerp), Jacint Jordana (IBEI) and David Levi-Faur (Hebrew University Jerusalem) 4. Risk Regulation Dovile Rimkute (U. Leiden) & Sandra Eckert (U. Aarhus) 5. The Regulatory Security State in Europe Moritz Weiss & Andreas Kruck (LMU Munich both) 6. Integrity regulation: challenges and trends Slobodan Tomic (U. York) 7. Regulatory Governance and Competition Denis A. Guimaraes (U. Michigan) 8. Informal empowerment and non-majoritarian institutions: new frontiers Thibaud Deruelle (U. Lausanne) 9. Norface: Democractic Governance in a Turbulent Age Jana Egekhofer and Sophie Lecheler (U. Vienna) 10. Reconnecting Regulation to Citizens Martin Lodge (LSE) 11. EU agencies in comparative perspective Eva Ruffing & Martin Weinrich (both University of Osnabrueck)