New Governance as Regulatory Governance

Abstract

New governance has emerged as a school of thought focusing on the significance of institutional design and culture for effective and legitimate regulation. This chapter analyzes the field of new governance from a regulatory perspective and examines the ways in which governments can effectively regulate markets from both a theoretical and practical lens. New governance as regulatory governance focuses on the ways that government and the private sector can successfully operate together - a distinct departure from traditional command-and-control regulation. The chapter explains the reasons for this shift away from traditional regulation toward regulatory governance and provides examples of the benefits of new governance’s approach as applied in environmental law, occupational safety, discrimination law, financial regulation, and organizational sentencing guidelines. In these contexts, the self-regulation structure of new governance relies on internal reporting, and the chapter therefore stresses the importance of private reporting to support the regulatory process. The chapter concludes by recognizing some of the limitations of regulatory governance and identifying directions for further research.