2016 Giandomenico Majone Prize

From the Standing Group on Regulatory Governance.

Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov is the winner of the 2016 Giandomenico Majone Prize, awarded for his paper "Temporary Legislation, Better Regulation and Experimentalist Governance: an Empirical Study", presented at the 6th Biennial Conference of the ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance, Tilburg, the Netherlands.
 
The jury has assessed all submissions on basis of their academic merit, including the relevance and development of the research question, the contribution that the article makes to our theoretical or empirical knowledge in the field of regulatory governance, the use of data, methodological rigour, the quality of the analysis and the conclusions. Special mention should go to the paper by Karen Lee entitled "Procedural and Institutional Legitimacy in the New Regulatory State".

The winning paper is an outstanding study of the use of temporary legislation. The paper sits at the intersection of regulation and legislative studies, and the literature review is embedded in different disciplines. It presents a new data set on temporary legislation that enriches our understanding of an important yet so far understudied phenomenon. Temporary legislation, or ‘sunset’ legislation, has been the subject of legal research but has not yet attracted attention from empirically-minded scholars.

The findings demonstrate the relevance of temporary legislation - its share in legislation is growing, after all. At the same time, they challenge the promise that temporary legislation can be a form of experimental policy making. Instead, temporary legislation seems to be a functional solution to challenges of law making, making possible the adoption of policies on controversial issues or in times of crisis. The jury is impressed by the descriptive analysis, the rich data set and the thorough research design informing the paper. It should be publishable with some minor improvements.

Karen Lee’s paper deserves a special mention. Hers is a well-crafted paper that asks whether we can judge industry rule making by similar means as legislative rule making by government. The question is addressed via a theoretically inspiring juxtaposition of responsiveness that improves efficiency (regulatory scholars) and procedural and institutional legitimacy (rule of law). The strength of the paper lies in its ability to develop the underlying rationales of procedural and institutional legitimacy (transparency, impartiality, deliberation and accountability) in order to derive mechanistic implications that are in principle observable in industry governance, too.

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:

• 2014: Stratos Patrikios and Fabrizio De Francesco
• 2012: Kristian Krieger
• 2010: Hanan Haber
• 2008: John Mikler

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