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Congratulations to our 2022 Rudolf Wildenmann Prize winner

We would like to congratulate Nir Kosti of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has been awarded our 2022 Rudolf Wildenmann Prize for his Paper Conceptualization and Measurement of Regulatory Discretion: Text Analysis of 120 Years of British Legislation, which he presented at our 2022 Joint Sessions of Workshops.

Awarded since 2001, the Rudolf Wildenmann Prize recognises an outstanding Paper presented by an early career scholar at our renowned, longstanding annual event, the Joint Sessions of Workshops.

We are delighted to celebrate Nir's success. To capture this special moment and share it with our community, we have created a short video featuring Nir, our Jury Chair Sabine Saurugger, and Giulia Bazzan of the University of Copenhagen, who, along with Alessia Damonte, directed the Workshop Rules as Data and nominated Nir for the prize.

About our winner

Nir Kosti is a PhD candidate at the Political Science department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a fellow of the Advanced Graduate Studies Program ('Telem') and the Center for Interdisciplinary Data Science Research (CIDR) at the Hebrew University. He holds BA and MA degrees in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests centre around the interplay between legislation and regulation, and comparative politics.

In his PhD project, Nir introduces the concept of 'regulatory discretion'. He defines regulatory discretion as the transfer of regulatory powers from the legislature to the executive branch in a way that shapes the ability of the executive to make regulations freely or restrictedly. Conceptualising regulatory discretion by focusing on three dimensions: obligation, content, and procedure, Nir asserts that these dimensions may illustrate the development and consolidation of regulatory regimes and portray the power relations between the various actors involved.

About the Paper

Nir's Paper introduces and measures regulatory discretion in the British legislation between 1900 and 2020. Measuring regulatory discretion through Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, he observes the rise of the British regulatory state and its uniqueness from a legislative text perspective.

More specifically, the findings illustrate how powers have been delegated and formalised in the UK throughout the years. Rather than rigidly restricting regulatory powers, he argues that constraints on regulatory powers were imposed especially using permissive content provisions that formalise discretion while maintaining relatively high levels of it.

 

In his own words

'I am honoured and grateful to receive the 2022 Rudolf Wildenmann Prize for my research on regulatory discretion. I would like to thank the prize jury and the ECPR Executive Committee for acknowledging the contribution of my work.

Participating in the Joint Sessions of Workshops was one of the academic highlights during my PhD, and the interactions with other researchers in this field helped me advance my research.'

From our jury

'The jury particularly appreciated the methodological rigor in this paper as well as the systematic presentation of the results ... The study opens important questions which will have further repercussions for comparative political science on the transformation of the regulatory state.'

Read full laudation

Honourable mention

The jury wishes also to award an honourable mention to Angelos Angelou of the London School of Economics & Political Science for his Paper Purposeful learning from crises: The European Commission in times of financial volatility.

Our Jury

Sabine Saurugger Sciences Po Grenoble
Jury Chair, Executive Committee Member

Simona Guerra University of Surrey
Editor, Political Research Exchange

Marina Costa Lobo University of Lisbon
Editor, European Political Science Review

Emiliano Grossman Centre d'études européennes, Sciences Po Paris
Editor, European Journal of Political Research

Halvard Leira Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Associate Editor, European Journal of International Relations

 

11 November 2022
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