ABSTRACT. Chinese new political leaders have achieved to reconstruct its previous food safety regime and revise its food safety law greatly since 2013, which empower more to its local governments and social organizations in food safety governance. Apparently, a new type of value “decentralized governance” is replacing its former ideas like “centralized regulation”. Is China’s food safety regime really going toward a new type of “decentralized governance” mode? How to understand and explain this regime reform in Chinese context from political perspective? Can this new decentralized governance model really matter to build a more effective and efficient regime which makes its food much safer? This paper attempts to answer those research questions based on a mixed study which combined both of empirical and normative analyses. Firstly, it employs a few of empirical evidences and data to portray the process and features of this new round reform since 2013 which can be defined as a “decentralized governance” model from two dimensions: central-local relation and governance tool usage. Secondly, it is intended to provide a theoretical framework to explain and understand this transformation from political perspective such as its political mega-environment, regulatory failure and accountability facilitation strategy. Thirdly, the author is offering an assessment framework to evaluate this new reform whether it can be superior to the former regime to forge a more efficient and effective governance mode. Also, a possible prospect of this new “decentralized governance” in China’s food safety governance will be also addressed.

ABSTRACT. As in many other countries, food businesses’ self-regulation co-exists with governmental regulation in China as well. With the latest amendments, the Food Safety Law 2009 (FSL 2009) is viewed as the most stringent one up to now, in the sense that it has enhanced regulatory arrangements against food businesses. However, the latest FSL has also highlighted the process of self-regulation simultaneously. This paper will discuss this important transition in food safety governance in China, which reflects that the new FSL enhances government regulation while at the same time emphasizes self-regulation. Firstly, I will have a normative analysis of the latest FSL and explain how self-regulation is built in it. Secondly, positive analysis will be made regarding the practice of self-regulation in China. This paper will use the data from Chinese government to check how many companies have gained HACCP certificates and other Quality certificates before and after the enactment of the latest FSL. The statistics will show us whether the new FSL stimulates self-regulation of food businesses. I will explain how changes come about and draw some implications for the policy design in future.

ABSTRACT. Naming and shaming is an instrument with which regulators expect to control regulatees through publicising adverse information generated in the process of implementing the law. It has been widely used in many policy areas including food safety regulation. A preliminary observation shows that food authorities in China tend to publicise more information on inspection results and regulatory sanctions than their peers do in the UK. In particular, food authorities in the UK tend to hold inspection information ‘in camera’ while those in China tend to publicise full lists; and information on businesses (name and address) receiving formal enforcement notices is omitted according to relevant law in the UK while it is publicly available in China. Ironically, food safety in China is still a serious problem. This paper aims to find the explanation behind the contrast between the practice in China and in the UK. This may be achieved by answering the following questions: What is the benefit linked with naming and shaming? What is the potential risk or drawback? What is the content of or procedure for naming and shaming in both countries and what are the rationales underpinning their approaches? This analysis will highlight the significance for the regulatory design in future. It will be based on practise in food safety regulation in two countries, but is expected to have implications for different policy areas in other jurisdictions.

ABSTRACT. Transparency plays a key role in concepts of good governance. Its potential virtues range from the control of corruption to the promotion of economic development and stability to the empowerment of civil society. However, the origins and implementation of transparency principles are not well understood. For example, even though a majority of countries has now enacted transparency laws, window-dressing dilemmas are widespread testifying to lacking capacities or political will to implement and enforce these principles. This paper uses the case of budget transparency to investigate how the implementation of transparency principles may be improved. As scholarship on budget allocations has shown, budgets reflect the choices that governments make to realize their policy agendas. The theoretical framework incorporates a combination of domestic and international factors driving central governments’ efforts to publish budgetary information. The central questions are the following: To what extend can we observe cross-national differences and developments in budget transparency? What role do domestic actors and governments play for differing levels of budget transparency? What role do external pressures and the assistance of international institutions and donors play for differing transparency levels? To address these questions, the paper uses the data of the Open Budget Survey which enables cross-national and longitudinal comparisons of substantial dimensions of budget transparency. Our findings have important implications for understanding the origins of transparency and thus for promoting more legitimate and responsible government.

ABSTRACT. How are regulators constrained by procedural ex-ante control mechanisms? Are countries converging in the way they draft, notify, assess, consult on, and enact regulation? This paper attempts to answer these questions by relying on an original data set of administrative laws, administrative procedure acts, and executive directives among EU and OECD member states. It focuses on cross-sectional changes of rulemaking, defined as the due process for formulating regulations. This focus allows me to distinguish the NPM-driven transfer of administrative reform models (designed by pioneer countries or international organisations) from the institutional path dependence and persistence of administrative tradition. Empirical finding shows the presence of several clusters of countries with different modes of rulemaking. It shows also that specific ex-ante control mechanisms facilitate the adoption of further innovations.

ABSTRACT. As the Internet is increasingly used to offer online services, it brings along more security issues. Cyber criminals use the Internet to perform illegal acts such as installing malware, phishing for sensitive information, and committing various types of online fraud. Internet intermediaries, such as Internet Service Providers or hosting providers, are the key service providers on the Internet. As such, they can play an important role in enhancing cyber security. Yet, they are often not fully incentivized to provide secure networks and services. Security provision needs significant investments and with end users not being able to distinguish good performers from bad, intermediaries do not feel the need to make this investment. Moreover, unlike is the case for several other infrastructures, there is no (single) public regulator that can easily intervene by enforcing rules upon Internet intermediaries towards maintaining more secure networks and services. Although there is some scholarly work on incentivizing internet intermediaries, and the role of reputation and measurement of performance, a systematic analysis of the security performance challenge and its potential governance is still lacking. In this paper, we therefore pose three interrelated questions: How can Internet intermediaries be incentivized to invest in security? What role can reputation and measurement of Internet intermediaries’ security performance play? And, what role can government interventions play? In order to answer these questions, we empirically investigate how the behavior of a subset of Internet intermediaries can be modified towards investing in security and providing secure services and networks and services. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, we illustrate that measuring security performance in terms of reputation metrics can contribute to incentivizing intermediaries. We also show that involvement of public regulators can be very effective, when it comes to facilitating the process of performance measurement and putting pressure on Internet intermediaries to perform.

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ABSTRACT. Yugank Goyal (OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India; University of Hamburg, Germany) will address the regime of de facto criminalized prostitution in India from microeconomic perspective, by empirically studying independent sex workers (those who work outside the red light areas) and understanding their choice architecture and livelihood imperatives. The study offers fresh perspective into understanding regime types and possible reforms in prostitution, especially in developing countries’ context.

ABSTRACT. Much has been written about the legalization of brothels in The Netherlands since 2001. It’s national laws, local policies and perceived effects on issues as human trafficking and the social position of prostitutes have been under scrutiny by many scholars. Many relevant actors (prostitutes, national and local governments, neighborhoods, and to a lesser extent clients) have been identified and studied, but a remarkable neglect can be observed concerning the role of those exploiting sex related businesses. Entrepreneurs who let windows, own and/or manage private houses, sexclubs and massage salons, are virtually absent in scholarly research on prostitution. Using a Foucauldian governmentality inspired theoretical outlook, this article tries to fill this empirical gap. It shows how entrepreneurs in the Netherlands (via a system of licenses) are increasingly held responsible for the cleansing of criminal influences, the health and social position of prostitutes and their tax payments, and how they respond to these new regulatory demands on an organizational and individual level. Based on a case study of a Dutch city I will demonstrate the complex nature of the reshuffling of power relations accompanied by the legalization of prostitution and end with the pro’s and con’s of this ‘normalization via responsibilization strategy’, and the policy paradoxes it produces.

ABSTRACT. The European Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (ECWR) and Amnesty International (AI) are currently involved in a debate concerning prostitution policy. Both are, in strong defense of human rights, specially women’s and children’s rights, as well as gender equality. Based on sometimes different meanings of such rights and values and different accounts of the problems related to prostitution, these organizations put forward proposals about how national governments should deal with this issue: The ECWR pleads for ‘criminalization of the purchase of sexual services’ whereas AI wants to ‘decriminalize all aspects of consensual sex work’. In this paper the chains of arguments, especially with respect to causal and means-end-relations in both organizations’ accounts of the problems involved will be mapped in order to compare and evaluate the proposed policy. The question will be explored of whether a choice between AI’s and ECWR’s proposal could be based on what are the most important values and/or what expected effects are empirically supported.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we analyse, from a bottom up and new institutional perspective, the current discursive strategies and struggles surrounding the protection of geographical indications (GI) in the current negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partership (TTIP) between the EU and the US, which also cover IPR and GI’s on agricultural and food products. During the last decades, the definition of Intellectual Property Rights regimes for the protection of GI has been a major source of political and economic conflict between the US and the EU and among WTO countries. The current discussions surrounding the TTIP will impact both the EU and the US, but also all WTO members. Most of the past discussions revolve around the opposition between two different legislative approaches: the US approach follows WTO (the 1994 TRIPS Agreement) and is based on existing trademarks and competition legislation, meanwhile EU legislation is partly based on the Lisbon Agreement of 1958 (WIPO) and has a sui generis legislation, giving a high level of protection to agri-food GIs. In the past literature, several lines of arguments and justifications have been developed by legal and economic scholars to balance the pro and the con of the two IPR systems, using empirical studies and field research as part of an evidence-based policy. Another issue emerges recently during the TTIP negotiations, in relation to the protection of IG’s with regards to name domain in the internet governance (ICANN), which can affect the overall negotiations. After giving an overview of the different line of arguments in the past academic literature, and especially by contrasting two lines, one defining GI as public goods (Barham and Sylvander, 2009), and the other defining GI as a club good (Torre, 2006), we analyze how the recent debates surrounding GI’s and the question of internet governance emerge in the TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US. In this case, a third line of justification is proposed where geographical indications are defined as knowledge commons (Hess and Ostrom, 2003, 2007

ABSTRACT. There has been increasing scrutiny of the effectiveness of national corporate taxation regimes. Given global economic integration, corporations are able to legally shift profits to states where they pay little tax. However, what is legal is not necessarily legitimate. Corporations understand that their reputations are precious assets that they may jeopardise by their actions, and in this context their tax minimisation strategies seem increasingly at odds with the politics of austerity impacting many societies since the 2008 financial crisis. Furthermore, recent G20 discussions suggest they risk the imposition of unwanted regulation if they are not seen to be upstanding corporate citizens. Does this affect corporate perspectives of their strategies? We answer this question by first considering the reality that there are actually very few truly global corporations. The majority of the world’s largest corporations are still based the world’s largest advanced industrialised economies, especially the US. Secondly, we analyse indices of corporate reputation to demonstrate why a liberal preoccupation with shareholder value seems to still dominate their interests, and how this reflects the institutional context of their home base. Third, we consider the discursive leveraging of their interests through their response to recent inquiries. We find that a liberal ideological belief in free markets, and a related focus on shareholder value, dominate corporate conceptions of their legitimacy in debates about them paying their fair share of tax.

ABSTRACT. This paper will be discussing international trade agreements between the European Union and third countries as regards their regulatory and, more importantly, their deregulatory effects. The latter could be considered as having more severe consequences for the EU legal framework, thus circumventing existing rules and ultimately jeopardising the protection of higher standards in certain areas. The discussion will be illustrated with examples from the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In particular, the establishment of a Regulatory Cooperation Council, which these agreements envisage, may circumvent existing rules of the European regulatory process. While the exact role of this Council is yet to be determined, it already raises questions as regards democratic legitimacy and the maintenance of the institutional balance in the EU. This may further open the door for a greater influence of corporate stakeholders and lobbyists over the regulatory framework, existing and future, with the result of lowering barriers to trade to the detriment of inter alia technical standards, the environment, and consumer protection. It will therefore be important to scrutinise the most recent proposals of EU-US trade agreements in order to identify and analyse their respective (de-)regulatory effects on the European legal framework.

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses a challenge that developments in artificial intelligence will likely put in front of us in the near future: the regulation of autonomous and intelligent robots. This problem will be addressed through four questions: · WHAT should we regulate?

· WHO should decide how to regulate?

· WHY should we regulate robots?

· HOW can these objectives be achieved through regulation?

The first question (WHAT?) focuses on the problem of the variety of robots, which differ not only by purpose but also in their level of autonomy and intelligence. On the basis of these variables, I work out a classification of robots and put forward rules that may apply to each of them according to their specificities. The second question (WHO?) concerns the problem of (a) identifying the people (lawyers, engineers, ethicists, etc.) who should have a voice in working out this problem, and (b) defining the degree of the civic engagement that may be needed to properly address this issue. The third question (WHY?) concerns the goals we want to achieve by such a regulation: some of the goals (such as security and privacy) have long been recognized and dealt with, while others are new (a case in point being the need to ensure a smooth transition from the robot qua thing to the robot qua agent). The fourth question (HOW?) asks how to achieve the goals listed in question three. As concerns the goals we have experience with, we can rely on governance models that have already worked in the past in dealing with similar technological advancements (so privacy concerns, for example, can be addressed by relying on a model of mandatory informed consent). But the same strategy cannot be used to deal with new challenges, such as that of recognizing robots as having an agential status. So here I put present a way of looking at this problem that may offer a normative solution to it.

ABSTRACT. In the face of rising climate change risks and insufficient emission cuts, some scientists are considering solar climate engineering (SCE), proposed methods to make the earth more reflective in order to counter global warming. Although it appears to have the potential to greatly reduce climate risks, SCE would pose environmental and socio-political risks of its own, including at research stages. SCE field experiments warrant some form of international regulation, even in the absence of expected transboundary impacts. Yet developing international regulation is presently challenging because no existing international legal institution has the clear authority to do so. This is unlikely to change soon due to divergent interests of states. However, conditions may be conducive for some form of private regulation. The scientists who would be both the regulatory targets and integral to regulation’s development, on the one hand, resist potentially restrictive policies, but on the other hand, wish to avoid missteps in a controversial field. This paper suggests a possible innovative means to overcome these challenges by linking the international regulation of SCE field tests to a voluntary intellectual property (IP) and data sharing regime. A voluntary patent pool and research data commons could act as a lever to induce participation in an emerging, broader, and responsive regulatory regime. Once a pool is established and seeded with key patents and a commons with data, scientists, institutions, funders, and state regulators would have incentives to join, while agreeing to abide by an array of broader research standards and best practices regarding e.g. public engagement, transparency, assessment, monitoring, and international coordination. These standards could subsequently be gradually legalized. Notably, such a mechanism does not require national governments or intergovernmental institutions in order to begin.

ABSTRACT. In the current European energy transition we witness that the recent (and in part still ongoing) shift from energy provision by government enterprises to provision by private corporations (albeit not always fully privatized), is followed by a shift towards energy provision by private collectives (e.g. communities) - as the energy market does not seem to live up to the desired sustainability objectives. From a legal governance perspective this latest shift begs the question if upon the hybrid outcomes of the first shift (leading to 'regulated markets' as institutional environments in between public hierarchy and the free market) we find ourselves confronted by further hybridization, matching regulated markets to the institutional arrangements of civil society co-operatives. The paper focusses especially on the normative understanding of these institutional shifts, i.e. the related normative alignment or institutional resilience in terms of legal opportunities and constraints to these shifts. While ‘normative alignment' focuses attention to the legal liberties and legal abilities that, as legal opportunities, characteristically fit a particular institutional environment (including the use of green certificates), ‘institutional resilience’ is especially about the question to what extend normative institutional settings are legally constraining to certain governance arrangements, especially when either governments and/or corporations become strongly involved in community initiatives. The paper presents an analytical approach built upon institutional legal theory and geared towards supporting legal design in the field of the European energy transition.

ABSTRACT. Following the rise of renewable energy sources (RES), regulation in the UK and European energy sector is no longer the preserve of either the state or the market. The UK and the EU appear to welcome such a vision of citizens and local actors regulating where the state retreats. Yet, the regulatory dimension, at both levels, is not adapted to this multi-actor market, which creates two specific (but interlinked) problems. First, the regulatory gap in the governance of decentralised RES production by citizens, market and government actors fail to empower the ‘prosumer’. Second, on the consumption level, ‘services of economic general interest’ are formally recognised in the Treaty of Amsterdam, and access to such services is protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, as the (Europe-wide) rise in energy poverty highlights, vulnerable citizens are not adequately protected either. Given the shared responsibility of the EU and the Member States in this field, a coherent solution throughout the sector must be found not only to empower ‘prosumers’ but also to achieve ‘energy justice’. In this light, the rise, in the UK, of Community Interest Companies (consumers and local actors’ collectives) in the energy sector provides an interesting perspective: by providing a link between consumption and production, they allow a whole systems’ view. It is therefore the aim of this paper to assess whether this exemplar of ‘the rise of a social sphere in regulation’ could be used as a model for a more social approach to the governance of economic relations. After critically assessing the current regulatory position, specific examples of shared ownership in the energy sector in the South West of England will be considered, to assess whether the cooperative model, through its interactions between consumers/citizens and communities can help provide a more coherent approach to the multi-actor governance and help navigate the difficulties that the area brings.

ABSTRACT. A characterizing feature of the presently ongoing electricity transition in Germany is its strong decentralizing character. Especially the local level has gained increasing importance. Renewable energies in Germany are predominantly small-scale installations owned by private citizens, farmers, local companies etc. Local governments both try to re-engage themselves in the area of energy as well as they are playing a pivotal role in spatial planning, determining over potential sites for electricity generation. Due to the historical development of the electricity field in Germany local governments furthermore play an important role in handing out local and regional network concessions. The activities of local action groups and local governments challenge the position of the big utilities and are difficult to bring in line with changing political priorities on the state and federal level. Energy thus has become an important contentious policy field on the local level in Germany.

ABSTRACT. The Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) is the informal, voluntary, self-financed network of EU National Energy Regulatory Authorities (NERAs). This analysis seeks to uncover the incentives NERAs had and have in being members to the CEER. The literature suggests that regulators use their transnational networks as policy levers to advance their own agendas or to protect their regulatory power. I examine these motivations as causal factors explaining the worth and thus the continued existence of the CEER. Qualitative analysis of documental evidence and of 23 elite interviews carried out with former and current NERAs representatives enabled me to retrace the history of the CEER from its very beginning up to the present day and to distinguish different phases in its evolution. Ultimately, the hypothesis of networks as instruments to political leverage bears out in the case of the CEER, with positive consequences on the development of the EU energy regulatory framework as a whole.

ABSTRACT. Background. Many small scale users in the Netherlands buy green energy but two third of this green energy is not “real” green energy because it is produced using fossil fuel. Energy companies fail to inform consumers about the real nature of their products and do not deliver the product that consumers bought. Apparently energy companies are allowed to do this within the legal context of the Dutch energy market. This seems to obstruct innovation on the liberalized energy market and inhibits the shift towards a zero energy society. Research questions - the decription of green energy delivery by energy companies to small-scale users in the Netherlands; - the explanation of the delivery process in the energy delivery network in terms of the legal framework for green energy delivery and the underlying political economy of the network; - to get an impression about solutions to change the current course of events in the delivery proces of green energy. Relevance Consumer and enviromental organizations are aware of the nature of non-green energy in the Netherlands but failed to solve the problem. Dutch government chose to give private organizations the right to produce and deliver energy. However government constituted a highly regulated energy market. The article helps to understand how and why non-green energy is sold as “real” green energy and get a first idea of how to solve this. Method Description: Content analysis, four interviews Legal framework: Study relevant books, articles, three interviews with legal experts; Political economy energy netwerk: Interviews with stakeholders (ten) in the energy market.

ABSTRACT. From 2010 until 2015, Lithuania was the first of the new EU Member States to implement the strictest option of the Third Natural Gas Directive of 2009 regarding the ownership of its main natural gas company. This resulted in forcing the former monopolist Russian Gazprom to sell its assets in the market and consequentially eliminate the country’s complete import dependence in case of a supply crisis. The extensive reforms in the energy sector of Lithuania supported establishing the natural gas exchange, opening the first Liquefied Natural Gas terminal in the Baltic States and initiated similar reforms in the neighboring countries.

The Lithuanian experience still stands in contrast to the overall high dependence of EU Member states to Russian gas imports. For this reason the research aims to explore the unique case of reforms in the natural gas market of Lithuania, its causes and final effects. The paper aims to apply the analytical mechanism of Europeanization proposed by Knill and Lehmkuhl (1999, 2002) and argue that the Third Natural Gas Directive changed opportunity structures for the pro-liberalization actors at the domestic level. Using the process-tracing method and having completed interviews with high-level officials that implemented the reform and/or opposed it, the paper unveils the processed in the context of the broader EU energy regulation. It is a timely addition to the debate with ongoing developments in the EU’s energy sector, such as the proposals to create an Energy Union, the ongoing antitrust case against Gazprom and the proposal for energy governance.

ABSTRACT. The post-Maastricht era is characterized by growing importance of the European Council in the integration of various policy-fields. In this respect EU energy policy is no exception. Member States has kept the say over central themes of their energy regulation for decades and the energy sector remains highly politically salient as the commercial relations are closely related to the security. However, the European Commission has found avenues of unprecedented influence on the external energy relations of the Member States. While many EU governments reject supranational involvement in the area, Poland (2010) and Lithuania (2011-2013) have been amongst the first to cooperate with Brussels. In both cases high-level officials from the European Commission unprecedentedly participated in typically bilateral negotiations between the governments of the respective member states and the Russian energy supplier Gazprom. After conducting the interviews with the participants and observers of the processes, the authors of the paper take an in-depth view on the cases. The cases point to two novelties: on the one hand, even in fields of exclusive national competence, Member States become aware of the benefits of cooperation with the supranational level. On the other hand, the Commission is becoming more sensitive to differences between Member States. It tests new avenues of influencing the intergovernmental realm by offering information, leverage and real-time compliance of negotiated agreements with internal market rules. As a consequence, the role of the Commission in EU external energy relations has to be interpreted as highly flexible and entrepreneurial in countering intergovernmental tendencies rather than pushing for supranational integration. The paper provides an early analysis what may become a more usual practice after the current Commission's priority, the Energy Union strategy, is implemented.

ABSTRACT. From the early 1990s when Majone popularized it, the term ‘regulatory state’ has been used to describe one in in which independent regulatory agencies govern more and more aspects of the lives of citizens. The regulatory state is seen as being associated with the rise of neo-liberalism and the superiority of markets. This paper argues that the state of Australian regulation is distinctively different to those of the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe due to its history as a penal colony and its geographic and economic circumstances. It argues that from its very beginnings in 1788 Australia has been an ‘administrative state’ a society closely managed, supervised, controlled and regulated by governments and a large and long-standing number of agencies. The paper contends that while the conventional view of the emergence of the modern regulatory state, which holds that over the past four decades there has been a dramatic growth in the volume of legislation and the number of regulatory authorities, may be an accurate description of what occurred in Europe and the United States, it does not apply to Australia. It suggests that while there have been many changes in the technology of regulation since the 1970s these were not due to the emergence of the modern regulatory state as described by Majone, Jordana, Levi-Faur and others. The foundations of regulation, which underpin the modern Australian administrative state, were laid in the early nineteenth century and have continued since. These foundations are the regulatory tools of licences, registrations and permits that are supervised by governmental departments and statutory agencies. The newer tools of regulation such as self-regulation, meta-regulation, injunctions, codes of conduct and practices, private transnational regulation, outcome-based and principle-based legislation have added to, but have not replaced the ‘traditional’ forms of regulation that still dominate the regulatory landscape.

ABSTRACT. In The Netherlands the state has a double role regarding the social security system. At the same time the Dutch state redistributes welfare and regulates this redistribution. Braithwaite uses the term ‘new regulatory state’. This implies that instead of a command-and-control type of regulation there is more space for responsiveness. The ‘more steering than rowing’ principle also applies for The Netherlands. The state decentralized the authority for the implementation of social security. The Netherlands social security is mainly conducted by municipalities (social services), the Dutch Employment Insurance Agencies (UWV) and the Social Insurance Bank (SVB). The state gives a framework within these agencies must act. The responsive regulation approach is embraced by these agencies. In order to explore to what extent agents adjust their enforcement style, as stated in the responsive regulation approach (Ayres & Braithwaite), several case studies will be conducted; at three municipal social services and at two Employment Insurance Agencies. The first case study at a social service has led to five findings. First of all I observed responsive regulation in the approach of agents. The second finding is that agents experience that they have a double role in which they have to switch between enforcement and service provision. I also observed that agents have their own (citizen) approach and that they are aware of their mutual differences. The agents seem to have the same objectives, which they try to reach in different manners. Another finding is that the social service I studied is a ‘customer friendly’ agency with a warm appearance and a positive atmosphere. The last impression is that the vision of the agency can be seen (of course with some exceptions) throughout the whole institution; from the front-desk employees to the client managers to the director.

ABSTRACT. This paper is part of a larger research project that is intended to contribute to the debate about social regulation by focusing on recent changes to law governing long-term care (LTC) homes (also known as nursing homes) in Ontario, Canada. Intense public and media attention on deficiencies in quality of care have attracted political and scholarly interests in the regulation of LTC homes (Banerjee & Armstrong, 2015; Daly 2015). My research question is as follows: how did the government use regulation to improve the quality of care as an example of social regulation and why? The research topic is grounded in the debate about the relationship between the welfare state and the regulatory state (Haber, 2015; Levi-Faur; 2014; Mabbett, 2011; Yeung, 2010). The first part of the paper presents the competing understandings of the rise of the regulatory state. The main part of the paper will offer an empirical account of changes to the regulation of quality of care by focusing on the following examples: 1) minimum level of care; 2) access to specific types of care / services and 3) residents’ participation in defining care. I mainly rely on legal research and review of government documents released between 2004 and 2010. I argue that the regulatory state comes to rescue of the welfare state in the sense that regulation (through law) is used by government to reform the provision of care gradually and incrementally without completely relying on market mechanisms or traditional hierarchical control. This paper’s contribution is that it will advance Levi-Faur’s idea that the regulatory state and welfare state should be brought together, not as a trade-off but as mutually constitutive.

ABSTRACT. On 1 January the Dutch welfare state emerged in a major reform of decentralization. Many other Western countries show similar tendencies towards decentralization though the design and implementation of decentralization differs. In The Netherlands Schemes of social support, social benefit and youth care were transferred from national and regional authorities to the local municipal level. This decentralization is expected to enhance tailor made and integral decision‐making and changed the perspective from a ‘rights based’ welfare state to a ‘participatory society’ that stimulates citizens to take responsibility for their own fate. The reform was therefore not only a decentralization in the sense of transferring responsibilities and competences to a different layer of government, but also a recalibration of the legal relationship between government and citizen. The reform was therefore also a confirmation of the tendency towards a regulatory welfare state: the government (municipality) is not the central actor that supplies care and support, but confines to regulating and facilitating (also monetary), with the ultimate goal that the citizen organizes his own care, in a dialogue with the actual supplier. Though the reform is very young the impacts are already visible. There are wide variations of decision‐making procedures – a logic consequence of decentralization. Though the general picture is that many municipalities lack the capabilities to monitor and supervise the private agents that provide the care. The clients (citizens) are then driven from pillar (municipality) to post (the actual supplier). As a reaction to this the legislator is now contemplating on extending the competence of the administrative judges and include the factual provision of care in this administrative procedure. This is only one example; there are more. This example shows a known mechanism: the regulatory welfare state is primarily a withdrawal of the state interference (mainly on substantive matters), but goes hand in hand with new governmental interventions is to make sure that private actors are providing the welfare as planned. The main research question to be addressed is: to which extent does the local regulatory welfare state provide administrative justice? What are the consequences of the tendency towards a regulatory welfare state and what are the possible solutions? To answer these questions I will first describe the reform, then illustrate the outcomes with actual examples of decision‐making a few municipalities and finally pay attention to some suggested solutions.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the role of private actors and other non‐state actors1 in setting the boundaries between immorality (or contrariety to public policy) and social acceptability of contracts on human biological materials (e.g. tissue samples). This paper focuses on contracts on human biological materials concluded between the original donor and the first recipient of the materials. The original donor of the materials (a natural person) is always a private actor. The first recipient of the materials can be either a private actor (for example a pharmaceutical company), or a public or semi‐public actor (for example a university).

Private actors are involved in the regulation of the morality policy on contracts on human biological materials in at least two ways. Firstly, contracts are means of self‐regulation: private actors may regulate the use of human biological materials through contracts. These contracts can be declared invalid by courts when contrary to morality or public policy. In assessing whether or not a contract is contrary to morality or public policy, courts often make use of fundamental rights, human rights, and other general principles of law (including the international law principle according to which the human body and its parts cannot be source of financial gain). Secondly, non‐state actors are involved in modes of collaborative regulatory governance, including the participation in several expert groups and procedures instituted or monitored by public actors. For example, the use of human tissue is co‐ regulated by the Opinion “Ethical Aspects of Human Tissue Banking” issued in 1998 by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE).2 The Opinion itself is not legally binding, however, it should be taken into account by the EU institutions in regulating this matter.

ABSTRACT. In the course of secularization, religious communities forfeit their traditional power in shaping policy‐ making of morality issues. However, we lack empirical evidence regarding the phase of implementation. Following Mooney (2001), we would assume that the losers of the policy‐making process regain influence in governing citizens’ behavior after the legislative process as morality policy outputs are characterized by vagueness and indefinite terms. These characteristics increases the leverage for nongovernmental actors and the chances for collaborative regulatory governance or private self‐regulation. More precisely, one might expect that private actors either imply their own rules or formulate in collaboration with public actors at the local level specific implementation guidelines.

Hence, the paper follows two research questions: firstly, to what extent are religious communities involved in morality policy implementation? And secondly, what are the drivers of their engagement? By drawing on literature on state‐church interaction, morality policy‐making, and policy implementation, we argue that the involvement of religious groups is a function of their governance capacity, mediated by their willingness to engage. The configuration of the church‐state‐regime constitutes the general opportunity structures for religious communities to act. For testing this argument, we introduce a new measurement approach of religious groups’ governance engagement during the phase of implementation. Furthermore, we conduct a comparative case study, focusing on different morality policies in Germany. Thereby, we contrast the governance activities of the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church and the Muslim community in the regulation of prostitution and religious education. The paper enhances the existing research on regulatory governance in three aspects: first, it explores policy fields which are traditionally steered by the state in order to maintain dominating societal values and norms; second, it provides new insights on the causes of collaborative governance; and third, the paper sheets light on novel group of non‐public actors.

ABSTRACT. On 11 September 2015, two mobilized groups demonstrated outside the Palace of Westminster, London. One group held placards that read: “Ditch the Death Bill.” The other group held placards that read: “Give me choice over my death.” On 21 January 2015, two similar groups demonstrated outside the Palais Bourbon, Paris. One held placards that read: “soulager mais pas tuer.” The other held placards that read: “droit de mourir dans la dignité.” These public demonstrations represent tangible examples of the inherent feature of public policy on assisted dying: they represent an uncompromising conflict of first principle standpoints. This paper demonstrates how in England, France and Switzerland a failure to moderate this inherent feature of public policy on assisted dying has led (and continues to lead) to a number of policy related peculiarities. Namely, it has affected (i) public policy output – the content of relevant legal rules, judicial verdicts, prosecution guidelines, and medical professional guidelines on assisted dying; (ii) public policy effect ‐ how the aforementioned policy outputs are actually implemented and evaluated to tackle the real problems at hand; and (iii) public policy change ‐ the willingness to reform these policy outputs in light of their effects. Moreover, this paper highlights the benefits (and indeed the challenges) of the approach taken in the Netherlands; attesting the need for, inter alia, increased public‐private actor interdependency not only in defining the law on assisted dying, but also in the application and enforcement of the law on assisted dying.

ABSTRACT. State-surveillance seems to shift its territory from the US to the EU. Where recently, the NSA has been called back by the House of Representatives on tapping and storing phone metadata on US (and foreign) citizens due to a lack of evidence of it preventing anything, recent events (The Paris attacks, the state of emergency lockdown of Brussels) in Europe have paved the way politically to broaden the scope and reach of what states can do to surveil their citizens. Where in states of emergency, legitimate ground can be found, the problem is that once legal grounds have been cleared, states are often not keen on reversing their gained ‘freedoms’ of surveillance. What is often (mis)regarded is the ambivalent role of private intermediaries in these processes of surveillance. For example, on the one hand, Facebook was used in Paris by authorities to inform citizens (and citizens to inform citizens) and to collect data on where and how to intervene. In that respect, it served as a almost subliminal tool of self-regulated security, unmatched by former instruments in speed and efficiency. Privacy in such states of emergency si hardly ever an argument. Yet, on these same media, authorities are actively profiling and hunting down suspects (in case of emergencies) or they are just sniffing around to see what is happening (in ‘normal’ times). Not only does this show the difficult relationship of these intermediary media and states as regulatory forces, it also shows a (re)newed connection between digital social media -seemingly ‘free’ and without consequences- and real, physical spaces to be acted upon. The question that rises here is whether and to what extend legal privacy protection can play a role in shaping these intermediaries to makes sure state surveillance is kept to a necessary minimum. In this panel, we want to look at current instances or recent (media and communication) technologies of state surveillance and their legal basis of acting. Hereby, we want to questions forms of regulation not only of the state actor(s), but also at the role- and type of regulation of the technological intermediaries involved in facilitating forms of (mass) surveillance within the EU.

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ABSTRACT. The creation of European agencies (EAs) stems from the so-called ‘credible commitment’ problem. According to some scholars, EAs were created as independent bodies in order to enhance the credibility of the EU decision-making process. From this point of view, the existence of EAs would be a product of their level of expertise and independence from the political arena. In general, current literature distinguishes between EA autonomy from two types of actors: independence from politicians and independence from the regulated. However, most scholars have focused on the analysis of agencies’ institutional independence from the political sphere; that is to say, independence from their political principals (the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Member States, in the case of European agencies; or national governments and parliaments in the case of national regulatory agencies). What is missing in the literature is an analysis of EAs’ independence not only from politicians, but also from their regulatees.

Based on the idea that socialisation processes help to cast light on ties/connections with specific groups, this article examines the careers of current board members/top-level civil servants of European agencies, identifying their links with politicians (such as national governments or national political parties) and specific interest groups (such as business associations, firms, NGOs, professional associations or trade unions). This article also aims to examine whether appointment rules lead to the election of board members with particular links to interest groups and/or politicians. The assessment of political and interest group ties is based on an original dataset on the career trajectories of current board members of EAs.

ABSTRACT. The WSIS + 10 (ten years after the World Summit on The Information Society) environment culminating in a December 2015 meeting at the United Nations in New York provides an opportunity for a longitudinal view of international organizations in internet governance over the last tumultuous decade. This paper reports on findings from an ongoing three-year study of select international organizations (such as the UNESCO, the OECD and the Council of Europe) acting in the internet governance policy spaces. Originally convened by the United Nation’s system in 2003 and 2005 and convened again in December 2015 by the same system, the ten years period result of the regulatory-related configurations emerging from the initial WSIS meetings shows major transformations in both the actual policy spaces and the type of collaborations and conflicts. This paper uses document analysis, interview data, and participant observation as methods in tracking and analyzing these trajectories of change (including at the level of an international organization itself). At the same time, it tracks and analyzes emergent collaborations and conflicts among other actors (nation-states, civil society, the private sector, academe and the technical community) interacting in international organization-related contexts. Building on previous in-depth research on individual actors and specific issues at stake, this paper pays particular attention to data gathered from Fall 2015 meetings both of the preparatory processes for the United Nations Meeting and at the tenth IGF (Internet Governance Forum), with a view to assessing 10 years of multistakeholder governance in the Internet field.

ABSTRACT. Access regulations pertain to a set of rules aimed to ensure that incumbent telecommunications firms who own or control essential or bottleneck facilities allow non-discriminatory and non-exclusionary access to competing downstream firms such as local internet service providers (ISPs). Access regulations can cover both access to the unbundled local loop as well as other unbundled network elements, thus they are also frequently referred to as unbundling regulations. There are substantial gaps in the empirical literature on access regulation as it relates to internet outcomes. One shortcoming is the limited geographic scope of empirical evidence that only examine experiences in the U.S., Europe and OECD countries. Even then many of these empirical studies are plagued by the lack of time-series data. There are no recent examples of large-N or even small-N studies focusing on the effects of access regulation in developing countries. Analysis of regulation and internet outcomes that include developing countries will require more nuance given that many regulatory authorities may not even have the capacity to implement sophisticated access pricing rules (Estache et al. 2002). Another shortcoming is the lack of attention given to issues of service quality. From a practical standpoint, this shortcoming is crucial because as more of the world's population go online, digital exclusion will be increasingly defined by the low quality of internet connection which bars users from many useful but QoS sensitive applications. This paper aims to address the last gap by analyzing the determinants of cross-country differences in internet service quality1 and in particular, by examining whether access regulation could partly account for these differences. Since greater physical network capacity and higher proportion of wired broadband uptake are identified in the technical literature as some of the important ingredients for better QoSE, it stands to reason that access regulation partly impacts quality via its influence on investment incentives and wired broadband diffusion. In this paper, I employ nested analysis as proposed by Lieberman (2005). The investigation begins with a preliminary large-N analysis using a panel data of 170 countries/territories covering a period from August 2009 to present. Service quality is averaged for each country every year and measured in four ways: download and upload throughput (megabits per second), latency (round trip delay in milliseconds) and packet loss (percent of Transfer Control Protocol transmissions). The explanatory variable of interest is the number of years since unbundling was mandated in that country. Demand and supply conditions are controlled for including but not limited to the following: international bandwidth, population density, GDP per capita, fixed to wireless broadband subscription, broadband subscribers per 100 population, levels of IP traffic at the domestic IXP, number of valid DNS servers and number of root servers. Plots of predicted versus actual quality metrics are used to select a case for small-N analysis.

ABSTRACT. This paper critically evaluates the independence of regulatory authorities in the telecommunications sector, a central pillar of the regulatory state.

Copying the USA, most countries adopted the model of a non-majoritarian and ‘independent’ regulatory authority for telecommunications markets. This should provide a ‘level playing field’, restraining dominant operators, protecting consumers, and encouraging investment, by buffering political changes and interference. It facilitates judicial appeals, often on the merits of the case. It became a major element of ‘global best practice’ policies, along with financialization, liberalization and privatisation.

In EU and OECD countries, independence was built up through network governance and adoption of processes (e.g., impact assessment and public consultations). There was feedback through parliamentary and peer reviews and networks of regulators, notably ERG (later BEREC). Despite a variety of organisational forms, independence was of central importance, being analysed, discussed and reinforced. The European Commission pressed existing and new member states (NMS) to adopt this practice, and also accession and candidate countries.

Independent agencies did not fit easily with the political structures in emerging and developing countries, given weak institutional endowments. In autocracies, authorities were merely additional arms of the state. Weak or token parliaments were unable or did not care to oversee or review regulatory authorities. Feedback from appeals was often absent, the courts being slow, controlled by politicians, or ignored by operators. Authorities rarely collect meaningful statistics or measure competition, and thus cannot address market problems. Network governance was used only to generate lists of technical activities, neither to build capacity nor review performance. Many such authorities were for show, almost regulatory theatre.

A series of case studies on corruption in the telecommunications sector has highlighted the extent to which regulators have been captured and controlled by governments and heads of state, to ensure rents could be extracted.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to show that there is a need to review Articles 12 to 15 of the e-Commerce Directive (ECD) for several reasons: the ECD does not harmonise the conditions for holding intermediaries liable (but only the conditions for exempting Internet intermediaries from liability) and recent case law both at national and European levels, e.g. Delfi v Estonia, shows that divergences still persist among Member States; in addition, Article 15 has become an empty shell despite L’Oréal v eBay and Scarlet v Sabam. Second, this paper suggests that if a review is not possible, the very rationale of Articles 12 to 15 and thereby their interpretation should be rethought. Indeed, the rationale said to underlie Articles 12 to 15– and used by the CJEU to determine the domain as well as the effects of these Articles – is ill-suited to the complexity and diversity of intermediary activities. Following on this point the opinion of its AG in the joint cases Google v Vuitton the CJEU held in 2010 that the yardstick to determine whether an intermediary can be exempted from liability is whether “the service provider is neutral, the sense that its conduct is merely technical, automatic and passive”. Nevertheless, by stating that hosting providers within the meaning of Article 14 such as search engines or referencing services can be characterised as data controllers, the CJEU has lately blurred its message. Most of the time, intermediaries are well-placed to exercise control over the data they store or transmit while on occasion they have actually put in place control measures. What is therefore needed is a test that would ensure that control measures are protective of both Articles 10 and 8 of the ECHR and their equivalents within the European Charter.

ABSTRACT. In Google Spain, the CJEU established a so called “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) from the results of search engines for individuals claiming that the information available at a link prompted by a search for their name is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive”. This judgment is revolutionary not only for the far-reaching consequences of the principle it affirms, but also because it leaves in the hands of a private entity (though subject to possible appeals) the responsibility of implementing such principle. Yet, insufficient attention has been put into the enforcement of the RTBF as a measure of private regulation. Governance studies illustrate that private regulators should operate within limits, designed to prevent potential abuses and adequately safeguard the public interest. A vast body of literature defines principles of good governance in the context of private regulatory solutions, such as access, openness, procedural fairness, transparency, participation and effectiveness. A close observance of these principles is indispensible when regulation is entrusted to a monopolistic private regulator (as it is the case for Google) which controls a crucial intermediate input for the dissemination of information. Failing to adequately constrain the discretion of this private regulator is worrying not only from an economic perspective, but also for its impact on pluralism and democracy. Drawing from experience with private and co-regulatory solutions in economic law, as well as the lessons learned with “notice and take-down” regimes around the globe, this paper explores how the above mentioned principles can be put into practice in this context. To that end, we propose the establishment of an independent authority with the competence to appeal RTBF decisions on public interest grounds; and we define the requirements for an acceptable “coregulatory” process.

ABSTRACT. A decade into the era described in 2005 as Web2.0 (after the Ajax rich media software suite), intermediaries have become extraordinarily powerful gatekeepers for the broadband social media advertising-dominated Internet that is now a ubiquitous computer and mobile phone presence in the lifestyles of the developed world. These include dominant operators in search (Google), operating systems (Microsoft, Android), media (Apple iTunes, YouTube), social networking (Facebook), photo sharing (Instagram and Snapchat), chat (Skype and WhatsApp), commerce (eBay and Amazon). These companies dominate their respective sectors. Users who are now also producers, and hence termed prosumers (after Tofler 1980), rely on these platforms to process their personal data fairly and securely. Regulatory responses are finally emerging driven by both data protection and competition concerns, yet the over-arching need to ensure greater neutrality of intermediaries has largely been limited to those last mile monopolists and mobile oligopolists, the legacy telecommunications companies who provide Internet access. What is needed is a comprehensive prosumer law solution that draws on fundamental human rights to privacy and free expression, competition, and technology regulation to ensure a fair and neutral deal for prosumers. In this paper, we draw on the conclusions in Marsden and Brown (2013: Regulating Code) to explain how that comprehensive solution can best be used by the European Commission consultation on online intermediaries launched in September 2015. Our case studies are search, social networking, Internet access and chat applications, analysing both competition and data protection investigations in Europe and North America. The interdisciplinary mixed method used contains primary and secondary literature analysis and case analysis (both regulatory and judicial, where relevant), qualitative empirical interviews with leading stakeholders and both economic and engineering quantitative data analysis. We maintain that law, computer science and economics interdisciplinary analysis need to be deployed in order to explore a comprehensive policy solution to intermediary liability.

ABSTRACT. Intellectual property enforcement undoubtedly influences the design of online platforms. Any platform reliant on third party content, usually has to live up to certain legal standards in order to be able to legally operate. Otherwise, the right holders whose rights are being infringed could drive the platform out of the market by means of a legal action. Although the expectations of the law are uniform, the ways in which platforms accommodate them are very diverse. Some platforms, such as YouTube, go substantially beyond the law, while others do just enough to pass muster. In this paper, the light will be shed on the questions: 1) how platforms make their enforcement design choices and 2) what are the key drivers of such voluntary enforcement decisions.

ABSTRACT. The rise of the Digital Economy has developed online platforms, which, as twoor multi-sided platforms, act as intermediaries between such groups as Internet users and advertisers. Whereas the former usually enjoy online services for free, the latter constitute the side of the platform, which is monetized. In fact, based on ad services, for the offering of which the advertisers are charged, they get access not only to the users of the Internet, but also to their data. The latter may be in particular important for the purposes of targeted advertising: the more accurate data the advertisers get, the better they can target with their advertisement. Besides, the Internet, in particular the mobile one, enables a realtime tracking of the Internet users. All this raises concerns not only from the privacy point of view. Given that many business models online hinge on the gathering of data, the flow of data as regards digital platforms is highly important for platform competition. For example, the lack of the portability of data may contribute to the growth of market power of some digital platforms. A reaction to such a concern is already involved in the European Commission’s Proposal for the General Data Protection Regulation (Brussels, 25.1.2012, COM(2012) 11 final) in Article 18, which is devoted to the right of the data subject to data portability. So, on the one hand, it is important to decide on the scope of data protection from the regulatory point of view (also taking into account the importance of data transfers to third countries, as recently decided by the ECJ, Case C-362/14, Maximilian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner, 6 October 2015, ECLI:EU:C:2015:650). On the other hand, however, online platforms depend not only on the Internet users’ data, but also on their decisions and their behaviour. In this regard, a “more behavioural approach” to competition law has been suggested (Surblytė, Competition Law at the Crossroads in the Digital Economy: is it all about Google, (2015) 5 EuCML 170), in order to integrate into competition law analysis the results of behavioural economics and of the psychological research of the Internet users’ behaviour, in particular, but not limited to that on how they value their privacy, how much data they would give away, what effects targeted advertising has on the Internet users etc. So the question is how to strike a happy medium in platform competition, given not only the volumes, but also the myriad sources and the types of data in the context of the behavioural aspects of the users of online platforms.

ABSTRACT. This paper will be focused on the issue of coordination of public policies at the centre of Government, in particular economic policy coordination.

As the Treaty on Stability,Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union does not offer a definitive solution to the problem of finding the appropriate budgetary-monetary policy mix in EMU, recent initiatives adopted in the aftermath of the financial crisis would be addressed, in particular those related to the distribution of competences. Namely, the existing coordination structure at the level of the pan-EU economic policy exposes gaps and uncertainties in the relationship between the European Parliament and national parliaments, and between these and the Commission and the Council.

After the review and critical analysis of the pan-EU multilevel governance, several national examples of economic policy coordination at the central level would be addressed, in particular French, German, Dutch and the UK model. This part of the paper would be focused on policy analysis procedures, communication channels and coordination mechanisms, within central government unit, and their relationship with national parliaments. A special attention will be given to the reform and capacity building in the centre of government, and hence the institutional setting, structure, governance and internal relationships within the central coordination unit and the governmental bodies. The role of national parliaments in addressing monetary fiscal mix will be scrutinized, in particular in relation to the central bank.

The third part of the research would try to transpose patterns of economic governance in developed European countries to the level of Western Balkan accession countries. Namely, one of the main hypothesis is that the accession negotiations and the EU conditionality policy towards candidate countries may help in establishing appropriate coordination structures in candidate countries. Although secretariats for public policies or similar bodies are emerging, the coordination of economic policy in these countries rest predominantly within the Ministry of Finance, with the strong impact of the National Bank. One of the peculiarities in candidate countries is the fact that the International Monetary Fund plays triple role in economic governance: the creditor, who imposes conditionality through the financial arrangements, the judge who gives opinion on the success of economic reforms and, since a year ago, the controller on behalf of the European Commission, which delegated the role of the evaluation of the Economic Reform Programs to the IMF.

ABSTRACT. Today there are no ‘best practices’ of the OECD countries left that have not been discussed in Russia by experts and officials. For example, introduction of the Standard Cost Model in Russia is carried out under the implementation of the road map ‘Improving the quality of regulatory environment for business’, approved by Russian Government in June 2013.

In general, the prepared methodology follows the basic provisions of SCM international practice, from identification of information obligations to identification of total administrative costs of one regulation or several acts.

In November 2014, Russian Ministry of Economic Development published a document on evaluation of costs spent by business on compliance and cooperation with the state. Assessment of costs was carried out in ten areas of state regulation in the Russian Federation, including: Labor and employment; Sanitary and epidemiological well-being; Technical regulation; Pension issues; Migration legislation; Social insurance; State registration of rights to immovable property and transactions with it, state cadastral registration of real estate, land management; State and municipal procurement; Consumer protection; Tourism.

In order to evaluate work time costs on specific information obligations (information elements) 30 experts were surveyed and 30 business representatives were interviewed (including 10 panel, 20 individual). As part of costs evaluation in these areas, 973 regulatory legal acts were analyzed, 1598 information obligations and 2950 information elements were identified. The results show that total administrative costs in 10 areas of regulation amount to 789 billion RUR annually. Based on the report, it is planned to prepare sectoral plans to reduce regulatory compliance costs. The plans will set targets for administrative costs reduction.

On 22 September 2015, the Ministry of Economic Development by the order №699 approved ‘Methodology for assessing standard costs of businesses and other economic entities that arise due to compliance costs’. By mid-2016 it will be possible sum up the first results of SCM implementation in Russia – relative success or formal ‘installation’?

ABSTRACT. In the 1990s, Majone developed his famous argument about the EU as regulatory state on the case of social policy. Since, regulatory policy received decreasing attention in EU social policy and other instruments, such as the OMCs, moved into the focus. With the crises and related turbulences, regulatory policy is back in debates how to change the quality of EU market integration. Critical voices had argued that integration is so closely connected to the market that it would produce social policy in a collateral manner at best (Streeck 1995) and primarily in those areas functionally linked to free movement of workers (Leibfried/Pierson 1995). Other scholars pinpointed areas supporting the market on the one hand and market correcting or market cushioning policies on the other (Sbragia/Stolfi 2008). For them, consequently, a social policy in its own right existed (Falkner 1998). The debate has moved on, to discuss whether EU social policy emerges quasi automatically with the embedding of the common market (Caporaso/Tarrow 2009) or whether political decisions are needed (Höpner/Schäfer 2012). Yet, to empirically we judge how (close) EU social policy is connected to market integration we need more systematic knowledge about the substantial areas covered and the different dynamics across subfields are, e.g. supporting freedom of movement or granting worker rights. To contribute to this debate I present an original dataset on all regulatory EU social policy instruments since the founding days. Instruments and developments across time and over sub-fields are analyzed before I turn to institution and interest based explanations for regulatory output. While general patterns resonate well with competence transfer and decision rules, some sub-fields seem to be affected more by enlargement and ideological orientation in the EU institutions. On this basis, the potential of regulatory social policy to change the quality of EU market integration is substantiated.

ABSTRACT. Regulatory policies come in all shapes and sizes – not only that, they come in increasingly complex mixes as well. Although a growing number of studies in various fields engage with policy mixes, inconsistent terminology and the lack of a common conceptualisation and measurement of the dependent variable have limited the comparability of findings, and thus the impact of policy mix studies. From the perspective of policy design this conceptual-methodological and empirical research gap is troublesome as decisive policy interventions are considered crucial in order to tackle complex regulatory challenges such as the energy transition. Policy design requires, if necessary, intervening in and changing the trajectory of policy development over time by introducing new goals and regulatory instruments while simultaneously phasing-out old ones. However, researchers interested in design lack a common methodological toolbox that allows establishing long-term policy dynamics and identifying the processes (`layering’, ‘drift’, ‘conversion’, ‘replacement’) that shaped them. In this paper, we develop such a common toolbox to create a comparable empirical basis for policy mix studies, thus giving them new momentum. Clearly defining and measuring policy mixes, in turn, allows to shed light on the effects of specific design choices such as the integrated policy strategy. Currently, what effect policy strategies actually have is not well established. We seek to demonstrate how this gap in the literature could be filled by (a) presenting a comprehensive and comparable empirical approach to assessing complex policy mixes and by using this approach to (b) establish the effect of integrated policy strategies on long-term trajectories of the policy mix (with a focus on its consistency). Thus, we establish when and how policy interventions matter for the long-term trajectories of complex policy mixes. Empirically, we focus on integrated strategies in the energy policy mix of Austria, Germany, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

ABSTRACT. Regulatory reforms that have brought about the “regulatory state” in Europe have been extensively documented for the last two decades. Yet it remains open how and to what extent they have altered policy-making in an irreversible way, especially given widespread criticisms of regulatory institutions and approaches seen in the same period. To assess the continuity and change in policy-making in the post-reform period, the paper explores political dynamics of regulatory policies for pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement in England following a major healthcare reform in the late 1990s. As a sector characterised both by a high level of technicality and complexity and by powerful stakeholders, pharmaceutical sector represents an intriguing case to examine ways in which political struggles in the operational phase have taken place. The domain has seen high-profile debates over regulatory instruments and approaches in the period examined, showing a promising case to assess different approaches on the politics of post-enactment phase of regulatory reform. By tracing policy development over a decade, the paper analyses strategies of different policy-makers and stakeholders in explaining trajectories of policy outcomes. In so doing, it illuminates drivers of political dynamics since the regulatory state prevailed.

ABSTRACT. Research into regulatory policy change in general and environmental policy change in particular has seen considerable progress over the last few years. New approaches to measure policy output have helped to better conceptualise the dependent variable in the study of policy change. These approaches have focused on either specific on-the-ground measures or the overall composition of policy mixes and allow for better understanding the course of policy change over time. In the field of environmental governance, researchers are rediscovering policy design and have begun discussing the possibilities of designing ‘sticky’ policies that, over time, lead to changing policy dynamics better suited to tackle complex environmental problems. The literature shares an understanding of ‘policy output’ being characterised by different ‘levels’ – ranging from abstract goals to regulatory instruments to specific technical calibrations – that add up to an encompassing taxonomy of policy elements. This paper seeks to combine a policy dynamics with a policy design perspective in order to develop a forward-looking approach for environmental policy design. We argue that such an approach would help overcome the preoccupation of policy dynamics studies with explaining the past and shying away from engaging with possible future pathways while also shifting the focus of policy design studies from theoretical reasoning to an empirically grounded comparative perspective. Combining conceptual with empirical work, our paper seeks to answer one of the most prevalent research questions of environmental governance, namely how trajectories of policy mixes change over time. Answering this question, in turn, allows to develop possible ways to shape these policy trajectories, either through ‘path-dependent’ and ‘sticky’ policy interventions or through creating ‘tipping points’ that induce paradigmatic change in the overall policy mix. Our paper establishes whether different policy mixes have some type of durable ‘causal influence logic’ that defines their future potential to tackle complex environmental problems. Thus, we contribute to developing a forward-looking, prescriptive approach for environmental policy design that could inform regulatory policy making and help increase policy effectiveness.

ABSTRACT. Under the New Approach, the EU regulatory framework regarding non-food product safety increasingly has made use of standardization. By only formulating ‘essential requirements’ in product legislation (open norms and criteria) and using a legal ‘presumption of conformity’ that products comply with these ´essential requirements´ once manufactured in accordance with harmonized standards (being the elaboration of these criteria by standardization institutes), the EU legislator has created a co-regulatory framework that de jure does not obligatory impose harmonized standards on private individuals, but has de facto far reaching effects for businesses in the supply chain. Up to now it is unclear what the effects of these rules and references to harmonized standards are, when applied in private law relationships. This paper will address; 1) the use of standards within the New Approach and the long existing debate on its risks (a.o. legitimacy and role of industry in standard setting). It will discuss whether and to what extent Regulation (EU) 1025/2012 has solved some of the existing problems, and; 2) the significance of these harmonized standards and some of the problems caused by this public law oriented legal framework (presumption of conformity) when applied in private law relationships (contract and tort) (as illustrated to some extent by preliminary questions imposed by the Irish Supreme Court).

ABSTRACT. In the last decade or two, the number and the variety of regulatory institutions have increased greatly. Next to regulatory agencies, we see a spread of supranational regulators as well as private and transnational regulatory actors. The transition from government to ‘governance’ thinking has solidified the idea of ‘decentered regulation’ (Black 2011) where search for a clear hierarchy of norms would be futile. However, different regulators do not act in a vacuum. This paper focuses on interaction between public and transnational private regulators, attempting to identify conditions when cooperation between them is more likely to emerge. Accumulating research on transnational governance shows the complexity in the interaction between private and public standards (Bartley 2011). Furthermore, literature shows that interaction between public regulation and self-regulation can vary greatly, from a clear state mandate to light facilitation (Bartle and Vass 2007, Scott 2002). This paper aims to explain why different cooperation models are chosen, by examining public regulatory agencies and transnational regulators as rational organizational actors.

The empirical analysis in the paper comes from the field of quality assurance in higher education. The sector in Europe has gone through a rapid wave of ‘agencification’ and in most countries semi-independents agencies accredit universities and/or study programs. In parallel, various private and transnational initiatives have emerged to offer voluntary certification or accreditation (Harvey 2004). In some countries, national quality assurance agencies have now started to form official partnerships with some private regulators. The paper focuses on 5 major transnational private regulators and quality assurance agencies in 12 European countries, building on strategy documents, and making use of interviews with the representatives of the public and private regulators. The paper examines the extent to which the status of the national regulatory agency and the nature of the private regulator affect cooperation arrangements.

Black, Julia (2001). Decentring regulation: Understanding the role of regulation and self regulation in a "post-regulatory" world. Current Legal Problems, 54(1): 103-146. Bartley, T. (2011). Transnational governance as the layering of rules: Intersections of public and private standards. Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 12: 517-542. Bartle, I.& Vass, P. (2007). Self-regulation within the regulatory state: Towards a new regulatory paradigm? Public Administration, 85(4): 885-905. Harvey, L. (2004). War of the worlds: Who wins in the battle for quality supremacy? Quality in Higher Education, 10(1):65-71. Scott, C. (2002) Private regulation of the public sector: A neglected facet of contemporary governance. Journal of Law and Society, 29(1): 56-76.

ABSTRACT. A significant number of authors have addressed the uptake of non-state regulation (NSReg). However, less attention has been given to the variables that explain why any-one Non-State Regulator (NSR) gets chosen over other similar NSRs. This paper will test hypotheses generated from three of the most important organizational theories: corporate governance theory, transaction cost theory, and audience cost theory. It will do so in three stages. First, a Sartorian concept analysis will be used to define what is considered to be an NSR and why market success is key to their survival. Second, the paper will introduce the importance that the aforementioned theories seem to have as explanations for the success of NSRs and derive hypotheses from them. Third, the paper will test these hypotheses through a qualitative comparison of two successful NSRs in the field of voluntary carbon trading certification: the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Gold Standard (GS).

ABSTRACT. The main aim of this paper is to understand the evolution of the Israeli banks as political actors in response to growing political pressures on their traditional ways of doing business by exerting influence in the parliamentary and regulatory arenas. The question this paper raises is: how can the political strategies adapted by the Israeli banks explain their evolution as political actors in the parliamentary and regulatory arenas? To address this question the paper analyzes the conflicts over banks service fees from the early 1990s to 2013, by comparing the political strategies of the banks as regulatees which impact policy outcomes across arenas: the parliamentary arena, focusing on the Economic Affairs Committee of the Knesset, and the regulatory arena, focusing on the Bank of Israel and its Banking Supervision Department. Furthermore, the paper rests on theorizing the different political strategies adapted by the Israeli banks (including neo-pluralism, emulation and corporate learning). The main argument of this paper is that the Israeli banks learnt to play (new) political games. In this sense, as time progressed, the Israeli banks attempted at shifting the debate from the parliamentary to the regulatory arena while adapting more direct and active political strategies. The methods used is process tracing and the data is driven from documents and interviews, including a systematic historical and content analysis.

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on the involvement of regulatees and other interest groups in the production of legislative norms and regulatory rules. Empirically, it focuses on policymaking in relation to Swiss financial regulation, an area that has been traditionally associated with technical complexity, low issue salience and high levels of private selfregulation. In particular, the paper focuses on the a) the intensity and diversity of regulatees and “outsiders” participation in decision-making processes; b) the congruence of policy positions between financial industry groups, between insiders and outsiders, and between regulatees and the regulator; and c) the extent to which participation and congruence levels affect regulatees’ preference attainment. This case provides the opportunity to analyze the involvement of regulatees and outsider groups in policymaking at three distinct levels: primary legislation (i.e. enacted by Parliament), secondary legislation (i.e. enacted by the government) and rules enacted by independent regulatory agencies. Analyses rely on the quantitative assessment of consultations opened for the period 2003-2015, allowing the contrast between different financial regulatory issues (e.g. banking secrecy, money laundering, deposit/consumer protection, capital requirements) and periods of relatively low and high issue salience (i.e. before and after the Global Financial Crisis).

ABSTRACT. With the growing importance of agencies in the EU executive space in terms of competences and resources (i.e., agencification), advocacy groups have started to direct their lobbying efforts towards EU agencies. In particular, civil society organisations that advocate for human rights are currently represented in a number of consultative bodies and platforms of EU agencies such as the Fundamental Rights Agency, the European Asylum Support Office, and Frontex. The role of these bodies and platforms is to assist EU agencies in gathering information on fundamental rights issues. However, access to EU agencies gives human rights groups a privileged position to push their claims forward. Frontex – i.e., the EU external borders management agency–is peculiar among EU agencies for its (quasi-)operative competences, and growing resources. Moreover, since its inception, Frontex has raised serious concerns on fundamental rights abuses and lack of accountability with regard to the respect of human rights. As a consequence, in 2011, the revised Frontex Regulation introduced a Fundamental Rights Strategy, and two new bodies: the Fundamental Rights Officer and the Consultative Forum on fundamental rights (CF). Aim of this paper is to establish how advocacy groups lobby Frontex from within (i.e., in the CF) and what is the effect of this lobbying activity on the agency. These two issues are addressed in this article, first by determining the factors and the rationale for advocacy groups access, by cataloguing the groups represented in the Consultative Forum according to their resources and policy goods. Secondly, semi-structured interviews have been conducted to establish what strategies are employed by advocacy groups within the Consultative Forum. Lastly, the efforts of these advocacy groups will be matched with the evolution of Frontex’s approach to human rights, and studied through frame analysis, in order to assess the outcomes of their lobbying activity on Frontex.

ABSTRACT. The recent rise of EU agencies as an important feature of the EU’s institutional order induces important political-administrative concerns. Operating relatively autonomously, these agencies possibly escape accountability and democratic control. A potential remedy to this lack of legitimacy is the involvement of interest groups as an indirect way of responsiveness to societal interests. This can come at a serious cost, however, as interest group involvement introduces traditional concerns of mobilization bias from the interest group field into the area of regulatory governance. Accordingly, finding a balance between agency autonomy and stakeholder dependency is a challenge that requires a sound institutional design. This paper provides a systematic analysis of EU agencies’ institutional design of stakeholder involvement, as a necessary first step towards understanding how this design can affect the density and diversity of interest groups involved, and as such, the risk of regulatory capture. It draws on a novel dataset of interviews with agency officials and a documentary analysis to both map the various institutional formats of interest group involvement and how they function to attract various interest groups and manage these interactions.

ABSTRACT. Ever since the recognition of the causality between earthquakes in the Dutch region of Groningen, gas production and the ensuing damage to houses and buildings in that area, Dutch government faces big challenges in policy-making. On the one hand liability for damages must result in fast and effective repair of houses and buildings and in safety safeguards for the infrastructure. On the other hand public trust in the Energy Port Region has to be restored. As a result of the advice of the Commission ‘Sustainable Future North East Groningen’ a comprehensive package of measures called ‘Trust in restoration, Restoration of trust’ (‘Vertrouwen op herstel, Herstel van vertrouwen’) was announced in which Public Private Partnerships were introduced for the purpose and in favor of the economic perspective in the region, including the establishment of local initiatives on sustainable energy, damage repair and guaranteeing a confidential approach by the government. There are multiple actors involved in the execution of this package of measures, since the competence of decision-making is at State, Province and Municipality level. Hence multi-level governance and policy-making in this matter is extremely complex. The central research question this paper addresses is whether Public Private Partnerships contribute in a legal and effective manner to policy-making following the package of measures ‘Vertrouwen op herstel, Herstel van vertrouwen’ in the Energy Port Region Groningen. This paper critically analyzes Public Private Partnership-initiatives in the earthquake area Groningen and their additional value in achieving the objectives of the comprehensive package of measures, including the above mentioned economic perspective in the Energy Port Region Groningen and related local energy initiatives. Analytical notions of multi-level governance will be integrated in concepts and discourses found in the literature on modes of governance and policy-making related to Public Private Partnerships. This paper will demonstrate the gap between effectual approaches of governance and regulatory impediments as well as a description of policy-accumulation in this multi-level governance setting. The papers uses a case study of Public Private Partnerships in the region and examines whether the chosen form of governance attributes to a sustainable future of the region.

ABSTRACT. Many Dutch water works are up for renovation and there is a strong wish to explore the creation of multifunctional water works. One of the explored possibilities is to use water works for the production of sustainable energy. Various innovative techniques are developed for producing tidal energy, wind power and blue (osmotic) energy at flood defences. Governments are positive about the idea. They believe that realization can contribute to climate adaptation and sustainability and generate export potential. Local governments hope that the innovative constructions will attract tourists and international businesses. Despise these public benefits the authorities are willing nor able to realize the energy & water works themselves. Because of austerity reasons and changing ideas about roles and responsibilities the governments opt for externalisation and hope for private investments in these innovative infrastructure projects. Governments are hesitant to act as initiator and do not want to have a too prominent role in the projects, they rather ‘facilitate’ the initiatives of private actors. One of the ways governments try to involve private firms is by so-called discursive framing. With a discourse on public and private roles and responsibilities the authorities ‘frame’ what the problem is, how this problem could be solved and who should do this. To gain more inside in the strategies governments use to active private actors and externalise public services (in our case the realization of innovative public infrastructure) we conduct a comparative case study of four attempts to realize energy & water works. We investigate how authorities use diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing to position themselves in relation to private actors and try to activate these private actors to realize energy & water works. We explore the effects of this strategy of discursive framing on the behaviour of private actors. Do the firms live up to the governments’ desire and take up the initiative to realize energy & water works? Can discursive framing thereby be identified as an effective government tool to establish sustainability and innovation through public-private collaboration?

ABSTRACT. Recent scholarly attention shows increasing involvement of local low-carbon energy initiatives (LLCEIs) in governance and policy, in particular in relation to innovations vis-à-vis renewable energy and energy efficiency. Although emphasizing the role of central government in climate change policy innovation, the research agenda of Jordan and Huitema (2014a; 2014b; 2014c) , proves to be useful for analyzing policy innovation dynamics at decentralized levels of government as well. When applying the invention, evaluation (impact), and diffusion triad of policy innovation as introduced by Jordan & Huitema (2014b; 2014c), findings of Blanchet (2014) show that in the case of Berlin energy policy-making, LLCEIs were a source for policy invention since they pushed the dominant coalition to act towards a local energy transition and made the City’s energy policy issues known to the public (p. 252). Furthermore, Dóci et al. (2015) disclosed that LLCEIs attract local and provincial government support and that the Dutch policy sub-regime considers LLCEIs important enough to create supportive policies (i.e. financial and professional help) (p. 92). In the discourse of the energy policy domain, notions such as territory, local, collectivities, communities, participatory democracy, and decentralization emerge (Nadaï et al., 2015, p. 282; Moss et al., 2014). Moreover, Nadaï et al. (2015) point out that LLCEIs invent ways of doing energy policy differently and bring attention to issues previously unrecognized in relation to low carbon initiatives. Therefore, we feel that the proliferation of LLCEIs has serious implications for low carbon policy and modes of governance at local, regional, and national level. The central research question of this paper is: What modes of governance and/or policies do decentralized governments advance in response to the emergence of LLCEIs? This research question is answered by means of comparing two case studies: the Dutch regions of Overijssel and Fryslân. Analytical notions of policy innovations (cf. Jordan & Huitema 2014b; 2014c) will be complemented by Bulkeley and Kern’s (2006) ‘governance through enabling’ as analytical perspective apt for interpreting the innovations in policy and governance that potentially emerge vis-à-vis LLCEIs. Data collection involved in-depth interviews and use of secondary data. The results will further the understanding of decentralized low carbon policy and governance innovation processes vis-à-vis the role of LLCEIs.

ABSTRACT. Network companies fulfill a critical role in the energy transition. We study this role empirically in the case a Dutch national gas network company connects a biogas producer. This project required a range of choices among many intertwined technical and institutional variables. Choices among these variables involve multiple, potentially competing, public values like safety, cost-efficiency, sustainability and non-discrimination. A formal governance structure generally guides network companies in how to act in the public interest, but we argue that unclarity may remain on how to trade off public values in particular instances. In these instances, a network company aims to claim legitimacy for the choices made. Via semi-structured interviews an in-depth case study was conducted to explore how a network company interpreted its public role when injecting biogas in the light of potential public value trade offs. We conclude that legitimacy is sought and found in a mixture of formal and informal ways both inside the organization as well as outside. The current governance regime allows the network company to assume a leading role in this innovation proces, yet at the same time it fails to provide a stable starting point for claiming legitimacy. These findings provide food for thought on how to institutionally embed the role of network companies, particularly when public values are considered to be dynamic, subjective, ambiguous and relative.