2014 Giandomenico Majone Prize

From the Standing Group on Regulatory Governance.

The 2014 Giandomenico Majone Prize for the best conference paper was awarded to Stratos Patrikios and Fabrizio De Francesco for their paper 'Churches as Firms', presented at 5th Biennial Conference of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance, held in Barcelona, Spain.

The Award Committee included Jarle Trondal, Linda Senden, Ioannis Papadopoulos and Claire Dunlop.

The awarded paper empirically assesses whether regulatory institutions control religious and secular markets differently. The paper finds that among the most developed countries, the extent of religious regulation closely mirrors the extent of business regulation. The paper concludes that the choices facing regulatory institutions are not differentiated by sector or markets. These findings increase our understanding of isomorphic processes in regulatory institutions and it is applied to a novel case.

The Prize Committee sees the merit of the paper in its innovative research question and case selection. Findings of the paper provide new perspectives to regulatory theories. The paper is also clear and straight forward in terms of formulation of research questions and overall focus.

About the award

The Prize is in honour of Giandomenico Majone for his outstanding contribution to the study of regulatory governance in the European Union and beyond.

It recognizes exceptional research presented at the Biennial Conference of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance. The Prize addresses scholars in their early career stages, e.g. colleagues who have completed their Ph.D. no more than seven years prior to nomination, and is preferably awarded to single-authored papers. The submissions are assessed by a jury, based on the academic merit of the paper. This includes the relevance and development of the research question, the contribution that the article makes to existing scientific knowledge or theory in the field of regulatory governance, the use of sources, the methodological rigor, the quality of the analysis and the conclusions.

The previous winners of the award are:

• 2012: Kristian Krieger
• 2010: Hanan Haber
• 2008: John Mikler

For the full list of previous prize winners, please see here.