Benedetta Cotta, Ekaterina Domorenok, Paolo Graziano, Trajche Panov
The ecosocial policy integration, required to address the intertwined social and ecological challenges of climate change, has been central to the European Union's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was launched to tackle the social and economic impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic while simultaneously supporting the green and digital transitions outlined in the European Green Deal. Drawing on the growing eco‐welfare debate, our contribution first examines how the 27 national plans implementing the RRF integrate social and environmental measures. It then explores the drivers behind different patterns of ecosocial policy integration in three countries which show different levels of ecosocial policy integration: Italy (high), Poland (medium), and Germany (low). Our findings show that institutional factors have been key in shaping national ecosocial policy mixes, driven in the Italian case by a strong governmental will to comply with the EU ecosocial guidelines, whereas in Poland and especially in Germany the absence of ecosocial policy legacies and the limited involvement of pro‐ecosocial societal actors have limited the effective integration of social and ecological measures.
{"title":"Varieties of Ecosocial Policies in the EU: The Case of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans","authors":"Benedetta Cotta, Ekaterina Domorenok, Paolo Graziano, Trajche Panov","doi":"10.1111/rego.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70057","url":null,"abstract":"The ecosocial policy integration, required to address the intertwined social and ecological challenges of climate change, has been central to the European Union's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was launched to tackle the social and economic impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic while simultaneously supporting the green and digital transitions outlined in the European Green Deal. Drawing on the growing eco‐welfare debate, our contribution first examines how the 27 national plans implementing the RRF integrate social and environmental measures. It then explores the drivers behind different patterns of ecosocial policy integration in three countries which show different levels of ecosocial policy integration: Italy (high), Poland (medium), and Germany (low). Our findings show that institutional factors have been key in shaping national ecosocial policy mixes, driven in the Italian case by a strong governmental will to comply with the EU ecosocial guidelines, whereas in Poland and especially in Germany the absence of ecosocial policy legacies and the limited involvement of pro‐ecosocial societal actors have limited the effective integration of social and ecological measures.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"109 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144603129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How should the law regulate the use and management of a resource in market activity? The resource can be perceived as an entitlement, granting market participants veto power over its use and management. Alternatively, market participants can be protected as consumers with rules focusing on disclosure, repair, and safety. The two alternative protections reflect different ways of regulating the economic power of large corporate actors in the market. Property law grants individual control over the resource, while consumer law protects consumers from exploitation but leaves them dependent on corporations for the continued use and management of the resource. This article examines the nature and scope of these protections by engaging with cases where there is a shift from a property protection to a consumer protection. In all these cases, market participants who manage resources are no longer perceived as owners; they are consumers. This article points to the normative and political economy implications of this shift.
{"title":"Consuming Ownership: Comparing Property Rights and Consumer Protection Law as Regulatory Methods of Corporate Power in the Market","authors":"Shelly Kreiczer‐Levy","doi":"10.1111/rego.70028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70028","url":null,"abstract":"How should the law regulate the use and management of a resource in market activity? The resource can be perceived as an entitlement, granting market participants veto power over its use and management. Alternatively, market participants can be protected as consumers with rules focusing on disclosure, repair, and safety. The two alternative protections reflect different ways of regulating the economic power of large corporate actors in the market. Property law grants individual control over the resource, while consumer law protects consumers from exploitation but leaves them dependent on corporations for the continued use and management of the resource. This article examines the nature and scope of these protections by engaging with cases where there is a shift from a property protection to a consumer protection. In all these cases, market participants who manage resources are no longer perceived as owners; they are consumers. This article points to the normative and political economy implications of this shift.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144568354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this Special Issue titled “Policy Growth and Its Impacts on Policy Implementation,” we present a collection of articles examining the relationship between the policy growth and policy implementation. The issue is organized around three key themes: changes, challenges, and chances. In the “changes” section, we feature scholarly work that investigates how policy growth influences the evolution of implementation structures and practices. The “challenges” section offers analyses on how the increasing complexity and volume of policies affect the effectiveness and operational practices of public authorities. Finally, the “chances” section highlights strategies that can be employed to manage policy growth and thus bolster countries' implementation capabilities. By addressing these issues, we contribute to various strands of literature, including studies on ungovernability, policy growth, policy implementation, and street‐level bureaucracy. In this introduction, we underscore our contributions to these areas of research and provide a brief overview of the within this Special Issue contributions structured around the three core themes.
{"title":"Policy Growth and Its Impacts on Policy Implementation: Changes, Challenges and Chances","authors":"Yves Steinebach, Christoph Knill, Mattia Casula","doi":"10.1111/rego.70041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70041","url":null,"abstract":"In this Special Issue titled “Policy Growth and Its Impacts on Policy Implementation,” we present a collection of articles examining the relationship between the policy growth and policy implementation. The issue is organized around three key themes: changes, challenges, and chances. In the “changes” section, we feature scholarly work that investigates how policy growth influences the evolution of implementation structures and practices. The “challenges” section offers analyses on how the increasing complexity and volume of policies affect the effectiveness and operational practices of public authorities. Finally, the “chances” section highlights strategies that can be employed to manage policy growth and thus bolster countries' implementation capabilities. By addressing these issues, we contribute to various strands of literature, including studies on ungovernability, policy growth, policy implementation, and street‐level bureaucracy. In this introduction, we underscore our contributions to these areas of research and provide a brief overview of the within this Special Issue contributions structured around the three core themes.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144547098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to “Climate Politics in Latin America: The Cases of Chile and Mexico”","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/rego.70054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70054","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144534082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dominika Latusek, Anna Pikos, Frédérique Six, Marcin Wardaszko
Citizen trust in regulatory agencies is crucial for the effective functioning of financial markets and broader public governance. This paper investigates the validity of the Citizens' Trust in Government Organizations (CTGO) scale in a transitioning society with historically low institutional trust. Using the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (PFSA) as the focal organization, our study examines how trustworthiness dimensions—ability, integrity, and benevolence—apply in this context. The research combines a quantitative study, which validates the CTGO‐scale in a new cultural and institutional setting, with qualitative focus groups that explore citizens' perceptions of PFSA's trustworthiness. Our findings confirm the CTGO‐scale's reliability and extend its applicability to low‐trust contexts and specific regulatory agencies. However, focus group data suggest that the label for the “benevolence” dimension is best changed to reflect the impartial, commitment to the public good aspects typical of public organizations. We propose replacing benevolence with impartiality in trust measurement tools to better capture the structured, duty‐driven nature of public governance. This study advances the conceptualization of trust in regulatory agencies and provides a foundation for future comparative research across diverse governance settings.
{"title":"Citizen Trust in Regulators: Evaluating the Validity of the CTGO‐Scale in Transitioning Societies","authors":"Dominika Latusek, Anna Pikos, Frédérique Six, Marcin Wardaszko","doi":"10.1111/rego.70055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70055","url":null,"abstract":"Citizen trust in regulatory agencies is crucial for the effective functioning of financial markets and broader public governance. This paper investigates the validity of the Citizens' Trust in Government Organizations (CTGO) scale in a transitioning society with historically low institutional trust. Using the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (PFSA) as the focal organization, our study examines how trustworthiness dimensions—ability, integrity, and benevolence—apply in this context. The research combines a quantitative study, which validates the CTGO‐scale in a new cultural and institutional setting, with qualitative focus groups that explore citizens' perceptions of PFSA's trustworthiness. Our findings confirm the CTGO‐scale's reliability and extend its applicability to low‐trust contexts and specific regulatory agencies. However, focus group data suggest that the label for the “benevolence” dimension is best changed to reflect the impartial, commitment to the public good aspects typical of public organizations. We propose replacing benevolence with impartiality in trust measurement tools to better capture the structured, duty‐driven nature of public governance. This study advances the conceptualization of trust in regulatory agencies and provides a foundation for future comparative research across diverse governance settings.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144534084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to “Political Studies of Automated Governing: A Bird's Eye (Re)view”","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/rego.70051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70051","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144796848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In contrast to the “quiet” politics of the pre‐2008 period, macroeconomic policy has become “noisy”. This break raises a question: How do independent agencies designed for quiet politics react when a contentious public turns the volume up on them? Central banks provide an interesting case because while they are self‐professed adherents to communicative transparency, individual case studies have documented their use of strategic silence as a defense mechanism against politicization. This paper provides a quantitative test of the theory that when faced with public contention on core monetary policy issues, central banks are likely to opt for strategic silence. We focus on the most contested of central bank policies: large‐scale asset purchase programs or “quantitative easing” (QE). We examine four topics associated with particularly contested side effects of QE: house prices, exchange rates, corporate debt, and climate change. We hypothesize that an active QE program makes a central bank less likely to address these topics in public. We further expect that the strength—and, in the case of the exchange rate, the direction—of this effect varies depending on the precise composition of asset purchases and on countries' growth models. Using panel regression analysis on a dataset of more than 11,000 speeches by 18 central banks, we find that as a group, central banks conducting QE programs exhibited strategic silence on house prices, exchange rates, and climate change. We also find support for three out of four country‐specific hypotheses. These results point to significant technocratic agency in the de‐ and re‐politicization of policy issues.
{"title":"Noisy Politics, Quiet Technocrats: Strategic Silence by Central Banks","authors":"Benjamin Braun, Maximilian Düsterhöft","doi":"10.1111/rego.70052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70052","url":null,"abstract":"In contrast to the “quiet” politics of the pre‐2008 period, macroeconomic policy has become “noisy”. This break raises a question: How do independent agencies designed for quiet politics react when a contentious public turns the volume up on them? Central banks provide an interesting case because while they are self‐professed adherents to communicative transparency, individual case studies have documented their use of strategic silence as a defense mechanism against politicization. This paper provides a quantitative test of the theory that when faced with public contention on core monetary policy issues, central banks are likely to opt for strategic silence. We focus on the most contested of central bank policies: large‐scale asset purchase programs or “quantitative easing” (QE). We examine four topics associated with particularly contested side effects of QE: house prices, exchange rates, corporate debt, and climate change. We hypothesize that an active QE program makes a central bank less likely to address these topics in public. We further expect that the strength—and, in the case of the exchange rate, the direction—of this effect varies depending on the precise composition of asset purchases and on countries' growth models. Using panel regression analysis on a dataset of more than 11,000 speeches by 18 central banks, we find that as a group, central banks conducting QE programs exhibited strategic silence on house prices, exchange rates, and climate change. We also find support for three out of four country‐specific hypotheses. These results point to significant technocratic agency in the de‐ and re‐politicization of policy issues.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The European Union (EU) is making regulatory efforts to allow for the safe integration of drones into civilian airspace through automated means. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/664 concerning unmanned traffic management (a system referred to as “U‐Space”) furthers that commitment. Accordingly, drone operators must avail themselves of automatic traffic‐related “U‐Space services” concerning flight authorization, geo awareness, traffic information, and network identification before entering U‐Space airspace. Using infrastructural analysis, as proposed within Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article shows that while automation is meant to ensure safe traffic, it could also challenge U‐Space safety in at least three ways: by inviting reliability concerns for U‐Space infrastructure; because of the transition from human‐centric to automation‐centric systems; and by being subject to irregularities within the EU's framework. An infrastructural analysis, therefore, helps in unveiling important factors which influence the safety of automated technologies and in critically discussing the role of law in their regulation.
{"title":"Law and Infrastructure: Reliability, Automation Transition, and Irregularities of “U‐Space”","authors":"Samar Abbas Nawaz","doi":"10.1111/rego.70046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70046","url":null,"abstract":"The European Union (EU) is making regulatory efforts to allow for the safe integration of drones into civilian airspace through automated means. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/664 concerning unmanned traffic management (a system referred to as “U‐Space”) furthers that commitment. Accordingly, drone operators must avail themselves of automatic traffic‐related “U‐Space services” concerning flight authorization, geo awareness, traffic information, and network identification before entering U‐Space airspace. Using infrastructural analysis, as proposed within Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article shows that while automation is meant to ensure safe traffic, it could also challenge U‐Space safety in at least three ways: by inviting reliability concerns for U‐Space infrastructure; because of the transition from human‐centric to automation‐centric systems; and by being subject to irregularities within the EU's framework. An infrastructural analysis, therefore, helps in unveiling important factors which influence the safety of automated technologies and in critically discussing the role of law in their regulation.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144319923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper advances research on policy accumulation by analyzing its political consequences in the French housing sector. It argues that, in the context of decentralization reforms, the accumulation of policy instruments has undermined national steering capacities and intensified territorial inequalities. Decentralization accelerated accumulation by decoupling policy formulation from the costs and administrative responsibilities of implementation, shifting these burdens onto subnational governments. The resulting proliferation of instruments politicized implementation, as local authorities confronted capacity‐driven trade‐offs between adhering to national directives and pursuing local policies, while simultaneously gaining opportunities to innovate and build coalitions with non‐state actors. Consequenty, local governments in economically dynamic areas could strategically leverage policy accumulation to advance their interests, whereas those in less affluent regions faced administrative overload. By adopting an institutional perspective on policy instruments, this paper shows how accumulation research can foreground the political consequences of accumulation, which increasingly shape the problem‐solving capacities and legitimacy of modern states.
{"title":"Decentralization, Europeanization, State Restructuring, and the Politics of Instruments Accumulation: The Case of the French Housing Sector","authors":"Francesco Findeisen, Patrick Le Galès","doi":"10.1111/rego.70047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70047","url":null,"abstract":"This paper advances research on policy accumulation by analyzing its political consequences in the French housing sector. It argues that, in the context of decentralization reforms, the accumulation of policy instruments has undermined national steering capacities and intensified territorial inequalities. Decentralization accelerated accumulation by decoupling policy formulation from the costs and administrative responsibilities of implementation, shifting these burdens onto subnational governments. The resulting proliferation of instruments politicized implementation, as local authorities confronted capacity‐driven trade‐offs between adhering to national directives and pursuing local policies, while simultaneously gaining opportunities to innovate and build coalitions with non‐state actors. Consequenty, local governments in economically dynamic areas could strategically leverage policy accumulation to advance their interests, whereas those in less affluent regions faced administrative overload. By adopting an institutional perspective on policy instruments, this paper shows how accumulation research can foreground the political consequences of accumulation, which increasingly shape the problem‐solving capacities and legitimacy of modern states.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144304597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare, an exemplary social investment policy, in recent years. Yet, considerable regional variation exists in expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not match demand. We explore the politics of this regional variation by studying Germany, a country that recently introduced a legal entitlement to childcare. Despite this legal entitlement, we argue that local political and economic factors (continue to) matter for childcare expansion and regional variation in coverage. We expect left‐wing local political majorities to be associated with higher expansion and coverage rates. At the same time, tight local fiscal constraints should limit partisan room for maneuver and should slow down expansion. Analyzing local‐level data on childcare coverage rates, socioeconomic context factors, and government partisanship, we find evidence of conditional effects between fiscal and partisan variables. We furthermore examine how local governments reconcile gaps in childcare provision with the legal entitlement and what distributive consequences this has.
{"title":"The Local Politics of Social Investment Under Fiscal Constraints: The Case of Childcare Expansion in Germany","authors":"Erik Neimanns, Björn Bremer","doi":"10.1111/rego.70037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70037","url":null,"abstract":"Governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare, an exemplary social investment policy, in recent years. Yet, considerable regional variation exists in expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not match demand. We explore the politics of this regional variation by studying Germany, a country that recently introduced a legal entitlement to childcare. Despite this legal entitlement, we argue that local political and economic factors (continue to) matter for childcare expansion and regional variation in coverage. We expect left‐wing local political majorities to be associated with higher expansion and coverage rates. At the same time, tight local fiscal constraints should limit partisan room for maneuver and should slow down expansion. Analyzing local‐level data on childcare coverage rates, socioeconomic context factors, and government partisanship, we find evidence of conditional effects between fiscal and partisan variables. We furthermore examine how local governments reconcile gaps in childcare provision with the legal entitlement and what distributive consequences this has.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144269400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：