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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

The last issue of 2025 is out (vol 19, issue 4). Thanks to all the authors contributing to this issue and to our stellar community of reviewers who make the journal possible and our work as editors easier. 🙏 lnkd.in/gcD_gHky

List of articles in the october 2025 issue of regulation & governance.

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Guo (Jerry) Cheng @chengguojerry.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

My latest work with Professor Bo Wen about the governance legitimacy of Financial Action Task Force on @reggovjournal.bsky.social! Key takeaway: lower-capacity regions convert the SAME compliance into WORSE effectiveness, exposing inequalities. Developing regions need incentive-based aid from FATF!

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Rob Ralston @policyrelevant.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

new article in @reggovjournal.bsky.social that examines how corporations engage in 'venue hopping' as a means to advance agendas in multiple spaces and at multiple levels This riffs off Baumgartner and Jones' notion of venue shopping, but adapts it for an increasingly multistakeholder world

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Corporate Power in a Multistakeholder World: Venue Hopping and the Multilevel Politics of Ultra‐Processed Food

The regulation of business is increasingly characterized by “soft” governance regimes that blur the boundaries of public and private authority, as signaled by the rapid proliferation of multistakehol...

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Benedikt Bender @benediktbender.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

🚨New publication out in @reggovjournal.bsky.social @danielk24.bsky.social & I show that the support for green subsidies by unions & business interest groups in the 🇺🇸 & in 🇩🇪 goes hand in hand with the support for eco-social policies. Open access here: doi.org/10.1111/rego... A summary below 👇

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Matthew Erie @matthewserie.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

After 7 yrs of work, the special issue "China in Compliance" is out with @reggovjournal.bsky.social. The focus is to unpack how #compliance works in globalizing China. #Cambodia #Kyrgyzstan #Tajikistan #Fiji #Vanuatu #Singapore #Taiwan #Ethiopia #Hungary onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

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Milan Thies @milanthies.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

New 📝 out in @reggovjournal.bsky.social 1. Governments are taking a more active role in education and training 2. Linking technical issues to politically salient debates, such as climate change and digitalization, helps open the door to new public policies onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

New #earlyview #openaccess article. The Expanding Digital Reach of the Chinese State: Digital Governance in China by Genia Kostka, Anton Bogs onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Screenshot of new article in regulation & governance that includes information on authors and article title, as well as abstract, as copied below.

ABSTRACT
Drawing on recent cases of digital technology adoption in China, this paper investigates changes in the digital reach of the Chinese state. We focus first on state capacity, a key dimension of state reach, and show that the adoption of digital technologies by central and local governments has increased coercive, administrative, and extractive capacity. We also examine the state's intrusiveness and show that digitalizing governance and regulatory processes has enabled new forms of power abuse, leading to resource waste and resistance among citizens. We contend that broader societal debate on the practices and outcomes of digital governance is essential to addressing these challenges. While digitalization poses unique challenges to regulators and societies worldwide, China's advanced experience offers important lessons.

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Arvid Lindh @arvidlindh.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

In this new study, Kenneth Nelson and I find that higher social assistance - which raises the income floor for the most disadvantaged - can strengthen public support for ambitious but regressive climate measures like fossil fuel taxes. Open access @reggovjournal.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1111/rego...

doi.org

Decarbonization Politics for All: Means‐Tested Social Assistance, Eco‐Social Values, and Public Support for Increased Fossil Fuel Taxes in Europe

Many climate change mitigation policies face public opposition, especially when they impose visible costs on households and are perceived as unfairly regressive. This country-comparative study examin...

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess "Trust Norms, Distrust, and Worst-Case Defiance in the COVID-19 Pandemic" by Valerie Braithwaite See abstract 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

screenshot of new article, with title, author and abstract information. abstract below.

ABSTRACT
When pandemics threaten, governments are expected to protect citizens. Trustworthiness and trust are central to meeting public expectations. Motivational posturing theory differentiates resistant and dismissive defiance during the COVID-19 pandemic. While trust is central to responding to resistant defiance, it is less relevant for dismissive defiance. Dismissive defiance is associated with distrust, conceptualized as losing hope that trust norms will restore trust. Using multiple linear regression and path analysis of Australian survey data, pathways are identified to resistant defiance and dismissive defiance. Hypotheses are confirmed, but with some unexpected insights. Trust in government and medical experts dampens both resistant and dismissive defiance. Intervening variables on the resistant defiance pathway include disagreement with government COVID decisions and vaccine hesitancy. On the dismissive defiance pathway, intervening variables include poor information seeking on COVID and poor adherence to COVID-safe behaviors. Resistant and dismissive defiance, while related, require different approaches to trust building.

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Matthias Haslberger @mhaslberger.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

🚨 New OA article with Scherwin M. Bajka in @reggovjournal.bsky.social: “Subjective Technology Risk and Education Preferences: VET as a Safe Haven or Dead End?” (link in last post) When people fear job loss from new tech, do they prefer vocational training over academic tracks? Short answer: yes.

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Erik Neimanns @eneimanns.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Our (@bjoernbremer.bsky.social) paper on childcare expansion (<3y) in 🇩🇪 was just published @reggovjournal.bsky.social! We examine how the interplay between local government partisanship and fiscal conditions explains parts of the regional variation in childcare provision doi.org/10.1111/rego... 1/n

doi.org

The Local Politics of Social Investment Under Fiscal Constraints: The Case of Childcare Expansion in Germany

Governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare, an exemplary social investment policy, in recent years. Yet, considerable regional variation exists in expansion efforts, and often t...

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

As we approach our 20th anniversary, we look back at an early contribution to Regulation & Governance, including this first editorial by the John Braithwaite, Cary Coglianese & David Levi-Faur that asked: 'Can regulation and governance make a difference?' onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Screenshot of the first paragraphs of first editorial in regulation & governance

Regulation and governance have become popular phenomena for social scientists to study and for good reason. Although redistributive, distributive and developmental policies still abound, the expanding part of governance is regulation. Indeed, few projects are more central to the social sciences than the study of regulation and regulatory governance. Regulation and the significant issues raised by it have become central to the work of social scientists from many disciplines – political science, economics, law, sociology, psychology, anthropology, history and others. Furthermore, the strong interest of other professional and scholarly communities, such as physicians, nutritionists, biologists, ecologists, geologists, pharmacists and chemists, makes regulatory issues even more central to scientists and practitioners who are perplexed by the demands for better, fairer, more efficient, and more participatory systems of governance.

We have established this journal to serve the needs of these varied professional and scholarly communities. We aim to provide a leading interdisciplinary platform for the study of regulation and its implications for governance. We seek to bridge and solidify discussions among a variety of relevant disciplines, serving the development of core theoretical and empirical insights in the study of regulation.

In this editorial introduction, we introduce the new journal first by offering an avowedly brief history of how interest in regulation has grown across the social science disciplines in the course of the last century. We then argue that the most recent buildup of that wave of research interest has coincided with a shift in political studies from an interest in government to governance. Finally, we distinguish regulation from governance and set out broadly, yet clearly, the intellectual agenda and vision for Regulation & Governance.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess Mining for Norms: International Extractivism, Chinese Business, and the Indeterminacy of Compliance in Kyrgyzstan by Asel Doolotkeldieva & Till Mostowlansky onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Screenshot of article title, authors and abstract.

ABSTRACT
In this article, we show how the study of compliance provides significant insights into the political and social tensions that shape Chinese business conduct in Kyrgyzstan's extractive industry and beyond. Drawing on interviews and analysis of legal documents, we first examine disputes between Chinese mining companies and Kyrgyz state institutions. These disputes demonstrate how the mundane workings of government bureaucracy foster a legal environment in which compliance is indeterminate. We argue that this indeterminacy—defined here as a social setting in which an action is neither predictably compliant nor noncompliant—provides a useful framework for analyzing interactions between mining companies and the state. We then move on to discuss how the establishment of international arbitration courts in Kyrgyzstan can be seen as an attempt to create new forms of compliance beyond this indeterminacy. We argue that looking at compliance through the lens of indeterminacy and examining ways of overcoming or managing it challenge the binary of compliance vs. noncompliance that continues to dominate social science literature on the subject. Finally, we maintain that the indeterminacy of compliance and the creation of new institutions both emerge from a legal environment that is shaped by broader political debate.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Which and Whose Rules Rule? Chinese Agribusinesses and the Challenge of Compliance in Rural Tajikistan' by @irnahofman.bsky.social Abstract below 👇 #RevGov #Compliance #Agribusiness onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

ABSTRACT
Chinese investments in Tajikistan have significantly increased since the early 2010s. In rural Tajikistan, Chinese companies make up the majority of foreign investors. However, Tajikistan's rural landscape is no easy terrain for foreigners. It is characterized by legal complexity, namely weak regulatory capacity, as well various elites' unofficial requirements. What does compliance mean in such a setting, and how do Chinese companies navigate this environment? Engaging with the literature on compliance and legal geography scholarship, this article examines these questions through the lens of a Chinese agribusiness operating in Tajikistan's cotton economy. I focus on environmental law and the governance of cotton procurement and illuminate a stark contrast: compliance with state law can be claimed relatively easily, but also questioned. On the contrary, compliance with elites' informal requirements is indispensable and requires adaptation. In this context, Chinese companies adjust and comply with laws and norms in locally specific ways.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Drivers of Noncompliance With Vaccine Mandates—The Interplay Between Distrust, Rationality, Morality, and Social Motivation' by: Katie Attwell, Hang Duong, Amy Morris, Leah Roberts, Mark Navin Abstract below 👇 #RegGov #Vaccines onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

ABSTRACT
COVID-19 amplified the issue of public resistance to government vaccination programs. Little attention has focused on people's moral reasons for noncompliance, which differ from—but often build upon—the epistemic claims they make about vaccine safety and efficacy, disease severity, and the trustworthiness of government. This study explores the drivers of noncompliance with the COVID-19 vaccination program in Western Australia, using in-depth interviews with refusers. Distrust in the government and concerns about safety, efficacy, and necessity (rationality) drive noncompliance when vaccination is voluntary. When governments mandate vaccines, rationales expand to include cost–benefit analyses of consequences, consideration of available alternatives, and moral justifications, with policytakers expressing “morality policy reactance” toward mandates as morality (rather than regulatory) policies. Our theoretical framework of vaccine noncompliance drivers shows distrust, rationality, and morality as interrelated and supported by social motivation. We consider policy implications and suggest holistic measures.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'The Drivers of Science Referenced in US EPA Regulatory Impact Analyses: Open Access, Professional Popularity, and Agency Involvement' By: Tyler A. Scott, Sojeong Kim, Liza Wood See abstract below 👇 #RegulatoryScience #RegGov onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

ABSTRACT
We perform bibliometric analysis on documents for 255 Regulatory Impact Analyzes (RIAs) prepared by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 1980 through 2024. Using a series of automated information extraction methods, we extract references from these documents and match them to bibliographic records. We then build a database of relevant articles (whether cited in an RIA or not) and fit a two-stage regression model that predicts whether, and how many times, a reference is used in RIAs as a function of journal prestige, professional popularity, article accessibility, EPA funding, and involvement of EPA employees as co-authors. By considering cited and uncited articles related to similar scientific concepts, we can observe systematic differences in what types of research products get used in policy analysis. Academic popularity, open access status, and EPA authorship and sponsorship all predict more likely and more frequent article use. Articles in prestigious journals are no more likely to be referenced, but once referenced in the corpus are then referenced more frequently.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

#Openaccess #Earlyview 'Legal Brokers of Chinese Investment in Cambodia: Compliance Between Contract and Culture' by: @matthewserie.bsky.social, Molly Bodurtha, Sokphea Young See abstract below 👇 #RegGov #Compliance #investment onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

ABSTRACT
In conventional understandings of compliance, lawyers and compliance officers internalize compliance within corporations. Complicating this model, this article argues that compliance professionals may occupy a Janus-faced role between informality and formality. We use the case of “legal brokers” of Chinese investment in Cambodia as our empirical testing ground. Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Cambodia from 2019 to 2022, we find that legal brokers between Chinese investors and Cambodian counterparties are a vital feature of the market converting illicit into lawful capital. Our findings have implications for not just compliance professionals but also market entry, sustainable development, anti-bribery, and rule of law. By drawing on theoretical literature including relational contract and guanxixue (the study of guanxi or “social ties”), we scale up our findings to conclude that a focus on legal brokers reveals a social reality that may be more emblematic for most of the world than the existing model.

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EU-VALUES Network @euvaluesnetwork.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Call for Papers for Special Issue in Regulation & Governance. Corruption expert Prof. Mungiu Pippidi @bridgegap-eu.bsky.social is seeking contributions for 'Regulating the Invisible: Efforts to Map & Control #Corruption'. 📅 By June 1, 2025. Read more: corruptiondata.eu/call-for-pap...

corruptiondata.eu

Call for Papers – Special Issue on Corruption Regulation (2026)

We’re thrilled to announce an open call for the Regulation & Governance special issue: “Regulating the Invisible: Efforts to Map and Control Corruption” Guest Editor: Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (LUISS Guido...

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Global South Dialogue on Economic Crime @gsdecnetwork.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Call for papers! Submit to the special issue of Regulation & Governance on 'Regulating the Invisible: Efforts to Map and Control Corruption.' Deadline: June 1, 2025. Email abstracts to ampippidi@luiss.it. Be part of the solution! #AntiCorruption #Research #Policy #GSDEC @nkechiazinge.bsky.social

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

#Earlyview #openaccess 'Reengaging Criminology in Regulation and Governance: A Synergistic Research Agenda on Regulatory Guardianship' By Carole Gibbs, Fiona Chan, Rachel Boratto, Tyler Hug See abstract below 👇 #reggov #guardianship #criminology onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Recent literature calls for scholars to bridge the divide that has emerged between criminology and regulation and governance. In the current work, we propose that criminological opportunity theories provide one fruitful pathway to that end. Specifically, we introduce the notion of regulatory guardianship based on the concepts of guardians, guardian capability, and guardian willingness to intervene, and connect them to the regulation and governance literature. We demonstrate the utility of this perspective as the building blocks for improving theoretical understanding of the effectiveness of a broad range of parties engaged in compliance work in specific regulatory environments. Considering new empirical insights into regulatory guardianship in the design of future legislation and systems of oversight and accountability may also improve governance implementation and effectiveness.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

#Earlyaccess #Openaccess 'Specialized Committees of International Organizations an Important Source of Organizational Autonomy' by Michael Giesen, Thomas Gehring, Simon Linder, Thomas Rixen See abstract 👇 #Reggov #IO #Autonomy onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Assigning the preparation of decisions to specialized committees composed of member state representatives is a widespread response to the ‘governor's dilemma’, that is, the tension between competence and control, in international organizations (IOs). We theorize a causal mechanism referring to self-selection and agenda-setting effects and show how the resulting division of labor among IO bodies produces organizational influence beyond current accounts of committee governance. We demonstrate why specialized committees develop a distinct rationale of accommodating expertise with member state preferences, even if composed of member state representatives, and why agreed committee proposals are difficult to overcome by final decision-making bodies. We argue that the organization of IO decision processes constitutes an important source of IO autonomy beyond the activities of IO administrations and independent from socialization or predispositions of individual committee members. Empirically, we show that IO committees meet the theoretically derived prerequisites for activating the causal mechanism and trace how committee influence according to the mechanism has shaped an important IO decision.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Volume 19, issue 2 is now out. 📖 See the table of contents 👇 Issue includes a special issue on 'Greening the Economy: Toward a New Political Economy' Other articles on #lobbying #implementation #intermediaries #procurement onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17485991...

Green Transitions: Rethinking Political Economy in the Context of Climate Change
Basak Kus, Gregory Jackson
Pages: 287-302 First Published: 07 April 2025

From a cultural to a distributive issue: Public climate action as a new field for comparative political economy
Hanna Schwander, Jonas Fischer
Pages: 303-328 First Published: 20 August 2024

Tackling toxins: Case studies of industrial pollutants and implications for climate policy
Tim Bartley, Malcolm Fairbrother
Pages: 329-348 First Published: 10 September 2024

Financialization and an emerging “green investor state”: Examining China's use of state-backed funds for green transition
Kasper Ingeman Beck, Mathias Larsen
Pages: 349-369 First Published: 21 August 2024

Historical Foundations of Green Developmental Policies: Divergent Trajectories in United States and France
Ritwick Ghosh, Stephanie Barral, Fanny Guillet
Pages: 370-382 First Published: 08 October 2024

Picking Losers: Climate Change and Managed Decline in the European Union
Timur Ergen, Luuk Schmitz
Pages: 383-398 First Published: 06 March 2025

Climate Politics in Latin America: The Cases of Chile and Mexico
Isik D. Özel
Pages: 399-421 First Published: 05 March 2025

Digitalization and the green transition: Different challenges, same policy responses?
Marius R. Busemeyer, Sophia Stutzmann, Tobias Tober
Pages: 422-447 First Published: 03 September 2024

Decarbonization under geoeconomic distress? Energy shocks, carbon lock-ins, and Germany's pathway toward net zero
Milan Babić, Daniel Mertens
Pages: 448-468 First Published: 19 September 2024

Fossil Capital in the Caribbean: The Toxic Role of “Regulatory Havens” in Climate Change
Jose Atiles, David Whyte
Pages: 469-481 First Published: 12 February 2025

The Development of Carbon Markets in Upper-Middle-Income Countries
Pieter E. Stek, Renato Lima-de-Oliveira, Thessa Vasudhevan
Pages: 482-495 First Published: 05 March 2025

The Rise of Investor-Driven Climate Governance: From Myth to Insti…

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

#Specialissue #Greentransitions #Politicaleconomy 'Green Transitions: Rethinking Political Economy in the Context of Climate Change' by @basakkus.bsky.social & Gregory Jackson See special issue introduction 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Although political economy (PE) has long engaged with environmental issues, climate change has remained at the margins of the field until very recently. This article argues that fully addressing the transformative challenges brought up by climate change requires a fundamental rethinking of core PE concepts related to the state, distributional struggles, economic growth, varieties of capitalism, and markets. Rather than treating the state as a neutral regulator or market facilitator, we conceptualize the green state as actively structuring transitions through mitigation policies, adaptation strategies, and the governance of just transition conflicts. Green transitions generate new distributional conflicts—within and across countries, between incumbent and emerging industries, and among social groups with unequal exposure to climate risks and transition costs. Climate policy also challenges growth-centered economic models, raising questions about the viability of green growth versus degrowth strategies. Different varieties of capitalism are evolving in response, with distinct institutional pathways shaping the speed and character of transition efforts. Finally, we critique market-based approaches that assume price mechanisms alone can drive decarbonization, highlighting the role of non-economic values, institutional constraints, and distributional struggles in shaping green markets. By linking climate change to core debates in comparative and international political economy, we identify new research agendas for understanding the uneven and contested pathways of green transitions across economic systems. This article, along with the others in this special issue on Greening the Economy: Toward a New Political Economy, aims to bridge some of these critical gaps.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Polarization and Voluntary Compliance: The Impact of Ideological Extremity on the Effectiveness of Self-Regulation' by Libby Maman, @yuval-feldman.bsky.social, Tom Tyler See abstract 👇 #trust #selfregulation #polarization #reggov onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
New governance models increasingly employ self-regulation tools like pledges and nudges to achieve regulatory compliance. These approaches premise that voluntary compliance emerges from intrinsic motivation to cooperate rather than coercive measures. Central to their success is trust—both in government institutions and among citizens. However, rising societal polarization raises critical questions about the continued effectiveness of self-regulatory approaches. This paper examines how ideological extremity, a key dimension of polarization, affects cooperation in self-regulatory contexts. We theorize that ideological extremity erodes trust in government and interpersonal trust, thereby diminishing cooperative behavior and threatening self-regulation's viability. Furthermore, we propose that extremity transforms authority dynamics, with ideological orientation and partisan alignment increasingly determining cooperation levels. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and World Value Survey (WVS), we find robust evidence that ideological extremity undermines cooperation through distinct mechanisms across the ideological spectrum. While our data has limitations, our findings have important implications for policymakers implementing self-regulation tools in polarized societies. The results suggest the need to carefully consider how ideological dynamics shape the effectiveness of voluntary compliance mechanisms.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Taking Eco-Social Risks Seriously: Explaining the Introduction of Compulsory Insurance for Natural Hazards' by @anneparth.bsky.social #risk #naturalhazards #insurance #quietpolitics onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Given the ongoing climate crisis, the frequency and severity of natural disasters are increasing. These events result in enormous reconstruction costs, pose a high burden on state budgets, and potentially drive homeowners into private insolvency. One policy instrument for collectively covering such costs is a compulsory insurance scheme for natural hazards. As the impact of natural disasters is uneven, introducing mandatory insurance regulation has a range of social and financial implications. While some European countries have introduced compulsory schemes, others have adopted different policy responses. Taking this variation as the main puzzle, I consider what factors can explain the introduction of compulsory insurance for natural hazards. Building on public risk and quiet politics literature, I identify several factors and test these against three empirical cases: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This analysis finds that focusing events are necessary for policy change, but the position and power of interest groups, as well as exogenous shocks within the EU context, were also crucial to explaining the introduction, rejection, and even termination of compulsory insurance schemes for natural hazards.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

#Earlyview 'Well-Being Economy in the Visegrad Countries: Lessons for Degrowth-Oriented Industrial Policy' By Oliver Kovacs & Endre Domonkos #RegGov #degrowth onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a transdisciplinary approach to design future degrowth-oriented industrial policies in pursuing a well-being economy in the case of a specific growth model. Specifically, we show that the case of the Visegrad countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, V4s) is a clarion call for the degrowth literature to be much more modest and self-critical. It addresses the puzzling question of whether the future degrowth policies of the V4s are influenced by their unique industrialization path, which has historically relied on foreign capital. It proposes a transdisciplinary framework (based on political economy and ecological economics) to root degrowth-compatible industrial policies for the degrowth transition. It then analyzes the V4s' capital-dependent growth models historically to improve degrowth-oriented industrial policy research. It concludes with implications for future study on degrowth-oriented industrial policy, based on V4s' experience anticipated to remain in a wayward FDI-dependent mode, to make the well-being economy-seeking endeavor more scientifically sound.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Impact Assessment as Agenda-Setting: Procedural Politicking and the Mobilization of Bias in the European Union's Audiovisual Media Services Directive' By @eleanorbrooks.bsky.social & @kat-lauber.bsky.social #RegGov #BetterRegulation onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Though often framed as a technocratic tool, impact assessment is a core element of the political agenda-setting process. In this article, we show that decisions about what is subject to legislative debate are made during impact assessment; specifically, during the drafting of the assessment report. Using a social process tracing methodology, we analyze the removal from the agenda of provisions for stronger alcohol advertising rules during the revision of the EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive. We identify and test three possible explanations for this non-decision, drawing on material not previously in the public domain, and exploring how procedural politicking in the context of the EU's Better Regulation agenda shapes the drafting process. Concluding that the non-decision on alcohol advertising regulation was most likely prompted by combined political pressure from within and outwith the Commission, we argue for greater attention to impact assessment as a tool for mobilizing bias and agenda-setting.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Inducing Compliance: Shaping Audiences' Perceptions in China's Cyber Crime Enforcement' by Graeme Smith #RegGov #Cybercrime #China onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Through case studies in the South Pacific and an examination of Chinese sources, this article examines two dimensions of China's cybercrime enforcement beyond its borders: how it manages to repatriate cybercriminals in the absence of formal extradition agreements, and why these repatriations are surrounded by a high degree of performativity. The article finds targeting influential government figures and bilateral police cooperation agreements are used to bypass legal norms in the Pacific to repatriate Chinese criminal suspects. I argue highly stylized police operations in the Pacific and beyond reflect longstanding domestic norms around policing and campaign-style governance, and the persistence of ideas that the best way to induce compliance among Chinese citizens is to humiliate and parade criminal suspects, thus tipping the “balance of awe” in favor of the Party-state.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

#Earlyview 'Administrative Sanctions and Loose Legal Norms: Resistance and Street-Level Policy Reversal in Norway' By Stig Gezelius #RegGov #animalwelfare #compliance onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
How do provisions for administrative sanctioning affect the implementation of loose legal norms? To streamline regulation, governments have increased their penal capacity by authorizing administrative sanctioning, and they have decentralized regulatory responsibility by loosening legal norms. A case study of Norway's animal welfare governance shows how using administrative sanctions to enforce loose legal norms led to unpredictable sanctioning and, thereby, subverted regulatees' trust in law enforcement. Ensuing resistance from regulatees pressured inspectors to regain legitimacy by tightening loose legal norms and by backing down on administrative sanctioning. Inspectors thus reversed streamlining policies to protect the primary purpose of their profession: to motivate compliance with animal welfare law. The case highlights unintended consequences of streamlining regulation. It also illustrates how frontline workers may protect their primary purpose by disregarding policies they perceive as disruptive.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

#RegGovArchive. Nearly two decades ago, this paper was published on the spread of emissions trading. 'Regulation lite: The rise of emissions trading' by Robert Baldwin A read that offers a reminder that challenges to emissions trading were foreseeable. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Abstract
Emissions trading is the governmentally promoted hope for a sustainable world. In different contexts, trading regimes display varying potential – both in absolute terms and in comparison with other regulatory instruments. Emissions trading, however, is a device that raises urgent issues regarding its objectives, cost-effectiveness, fairness, transparency, and legitimacy. Its use places emphasis on its “acceptability” and the virtues of regulation that is “lite” because it is non-threatening to the most powerful interests. Emissions trading is resonant with assumptions that are highly contentious – notably that it is acceptable because it involves no losers, or because, in desperate global circumstances, we have no choice but to use it. There is a need to confront the difficult issues presented by emissions trading and to face the challenges of combining “market” and “democratic” systems of legitimization. It is also necessary to avoid taking refuge in all too comfortable beliefs in cumulative checks and balances.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'Picking Losers: Climate Change and Managed Decline in the European Union' by @trgn.bsky.social & @luukschmitz.bsky.social #Climatechange #industrialpolicy #RegGov #EU Abstract below 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Decarbonization forces societies to cope with the restructuring and outright unwinding of assets, firms, workers, industries, and regions. We argue that this problem has created legitimacy for industrial policies managing the reallocation of resources. We illustrate this dynamic by documenting incremental state-building in the European Union, an administration institutionally tilted toward regulatory statehood and the making of the Single Market in energy since the 1990s. European greening policies, we argue, have incrementally lessened the primacy of regulatory tools and have introduced a plethora of instruments to accelerate green restructuring and carbon unwinding. Best understood as a process of multi-sited institutional layering, the European Union increasingly appears to complement financial and regulatory instruments to effect green energy transitions with the management of decline in targeted regions and sectors, based on targeted funds and targeted transition planning.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'The Development of Carbon Markets in Upper-Middle-Income Countries' by Pieter E. Stek, Renato Lima-de-Oliveira, & Thessa Vasudhevan #Carbonmarkets #RegGov #Indonesia #Brazil #Malaysia Abstract below 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT
Upper-middle-income economies face a specific set of trade-offs when reducing carbon emissions, which differ from the trade-offs faced in low- and high-income economies. To mobilize domestic funds, middle-income countries are developing carbon markets to attract private sector investment. This study advances a theoretical framework for carbon market development and explores the process in Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The case of Malaysia is examined in depth due to the slow development of its carbon market compared to its peers. Analysis reveals that Malaysia faces a carbon market dilemma due to high domestic emissions and internal challenges related to energy market regulation and land ownership, which have hindered the emergence of a pro-carbon market coalition. In contrast, Brazil and Indonesia have been more active in the international voluntary carbon market and have implemented key regulations with domestic political support. This study provides insights into the challenges and opportunities of carbon market development in middle-income economies, highlighting the importance of resource endowments and an enabling coalition for successful implementation.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

#Earlyview 'In the Eye of the Storm? A Quantitative Content Analysis on the Influence of Surrogate Inspectorates on Media Frames' by Julia Wesdorp #RegGov #Media #Inspections #openaccess Abstract below 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New article 'In the Eye of the Storm? A Quantitative Content Analysis on the Influence of Surrogate Inspectorates on Media Frames'
by Julia Wesdorp

ABSTRACT
In the past decades, scholars have provided novel insights on the role of media within regulation. Still, this strand of research has received less attention to the networked nature of contemporary regulatory governance. This article studies surrogate inspectorates, who focus on motivating the implementation/enforcement of regulatory rules, often temporary and without formal capacity. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 2700 newspaper articles, this article studies how the presence of surrogate inspectorates affects the way regulatory agencies are framed within newspaper articles. The results show that (a) media attention for regulatory agencies has increased in the past 12 years and is increasingly negative and (b) that the presence of surrogate inspectorates is associated with more sensational, personalized, conflict, and negative news coverage of regulatory agencies. This study concludes that, as the regulatory network becomes more complex with, for example, surrogate inspectorates, the control of regulatory agencies over media framing diminishes.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

#Earlyview #Openaccess 'The Green Economy and the Global South' by @hochstet.bsky.social #greeneconomy #globalsouth #RegGov See abstract 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New paper in regulation and governance 'The Green Economy and the Global South'
by Kathryn Hochstetler

ABSTRACT
The idea of a “green economy” is one of the latest attempts to bridge the environment and development aims, with a focus on economic growth that makes it appealing to countries that still see a significant development gap to make up. Yet the green economy—most often studied in the Global North and made the target of explicit policy initiatives there, often with substantial public and private resources—also presents additional challenges for the diverse states and populations of the Global South. In this commentary, I sketch a research agenda on three questions that reflect those challenges: (1) To what extent are the promises of the green economy credible in the national conditions of the Global South? (2) Will the green economy reduce poverty and reach the poorest populations of the Global South? and (3) How do the green economy activities of the Global North reverberate in the Global South?

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Looking for another way to engage with content from the journal. Check out our Youtube channel with videos from authors about their work. www.youtube.com/@regandgov/v...

youtube.com

New Research in Regulation & Governance

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European Consortium for Political Research @ecpr.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

🌀🌍 How are regulatory systems adapting to current global challenges? 💡 Share your insights at Europe's premier interdisciplinary event on #RegulatoryGovernance 📅 11–13 Jun 2025 📍 @hertieschool.bsky.social ✍️ Submit your proposal by 4 Mar @kaiweg.bsky.social @martinlodge.bsky.social

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Biennial Conference of the Standing Group on Regulatory Governance: Beyond the Regulatory State?

11–13 June 2025, Hertie School, Berlin

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

#Earlyview. 'The Rise of Investor-Driven Climate Governance: From Myth to Institution?' by Remi Kaplan & David Levy. #Reggov #Privategovernance #climatepolicy #openaccess onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Posted image of article title by Remi Kaplan and David Levi entitled 'The Rise of Investor-Driven Climate Governance: From Myth to Institution?'

Abstract

Investor-driven climate governance (ICG) is premised on mobilizing finance to address climate change by leveraging investors to pressure companies to reduce emissions. Examining the rapid growth of ICG from an institutional political economy perspective, we argue that powerful financial and regulatory actors with varied interests coalesced to promote the discourse that climate risks equal financial risks, and to develop a finance-centered mechanism of climate governance. The flourishing field created market opportunities for other actors such as data vendors and accountants, and attracted activists seeking leverage on emitters. In turn, institutionalization exerted isomorphic pressure on financial firms to adopt ICG practices. However, ICG practices of disclosure and emission commitments became increasingly decoupled from actions to reduce emissions due to the weak business case for decarbonizing investors' portfolios and corporate operations; the core economic mechanism was largely a myth. This decoupling created contradictory forces: it erodes the legitimacy of the ICG discourse, but we also identified dynamic feedback loops that strengthen the field, potentially making the myth self-fulfilling. Overall, we conclude that the field's momentum, interests of key actors, and feedback effects are likely to sustain the field, which is deeply institutionalized despite the current headwinds.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

#Earlyview ‘Is Warmth More Persuasive? The Effects of Street-Level Bureaucrats' Warmth and Competence on Citizens' Compliance During Pandemic Emergencies’ by Zhijun Pei. #RegGov #Compliance #surveyexperiment #pandemic onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Post about a new article written by Zhijun Pei in Regulation & Governance.

Abstract:

Compliance with government rules and guidelines is essential for effectively managing pandemic emergencies. Few studies have examined how street-level bureaucrats (SLBs)' behavioral performance shapes citizen compliance decisions. This study combines the stereotype content model (SCM) with the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion in a large-scale randomized between-subjects survey experiment conducted in China. The study tests the hypothesis that citizens' impressions of warmth and competence toward SLBs have respective and interactive positive persuasive effects on their compliance with government rules and guidelines during a pandemic emergency. The study finds that the impressions of competence and warmth are always important for citizen compliance in a pandemic emergency; and the impression of warmth matters more for citizen compliance for competent bureaucrats. An interaction effect between impressions of SLBs' warmth and competence in predicting citizen compliance was also confirmed. Citizens are more inclined to comply when they perceive SLBs as both competent and warm. The study concludes that citizens' compliance with government rules and guidelines during a pandemic emergency partly depends on their impressions of the quality of bureaucratic encounters. Thus, probing and highlighting citizens' impressions of SLBs during citizen–bureaucratic interactions is theoretically and practically worthwhile.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

#Earlyview. ‘Caught Between Privacy and Surveillance: Explaining the Long-Term Stagnation of Data Protection Regulation in Liberal Democracies’ by Nicolas Bocquet #RegGov #DataGov #Openaccess onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Imagine of title and abstract of new paper by Nicolas Bocquet published in Regulation & Governance.

ABSTRACT
This article pursues two objectives. First, it aims to trace the genealogy of data protection regulation in major liberal democracies. To do so, it examines the evolution of this regulation in the United States, France, and Germany, among others, and relies on the policy actors' triangle framework. Second, the article provides an explanation for the paradox that emerges from this diachronic analysis: a long-term stagnation of data protection regulation despite the radical transformation of the information environment and surveillance practices over the last three decades. The article finds that this long-term regulatory stagnation can be explained by a constant trade-off between competing and sometimes irreconcilable policy goals and, especially since 9/11, an overlap between state and private interests. Despite post-Snowden reforms, this conflict of interest continues to shape the regulation, raising many democratic concerns.

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

It is great to see what articles quickly gain academic attention. This piece by @profhvdv.bsky.social on stakeholder engagement by voluntary sustainability standards is on our list of recently most cited (of papers published in the last 2 years). onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Post is a picture of the abstract for an article by Hamish van der Ven entitled A Comparison of Stakeholder engagement practices in voluntary sustainability standards.

Abstract
Practices of stakeholder engagement vary widely across voluntary sustainability standard setters. This study examines how the sponsorship structure of standard setters affects the diversity of stakeholders included in consultations and the influence of stakeholder input on standards. I compare six sustainability standard setters through an original dataset of 7945 stakeholder comments submitted during public comment periods between 2012 and 2019 to answer two research questions. First, are some standard setters better at balancing stakeholder representation than others? And second, does stakeholder influence vary across standard setters? I find that industry-sponsored standards tend to attract more industry input than multistakeholder initiatives, but both tend to over-represent legacy stakeholders. I also find that sponsorship is a poor predictor of which comments will be influential. Comments that seek to weaken or clarify the rules in voluntary sustainability standards are more likely to exert influence irrespective of the sponsorship of the standard setter.

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Steffen Hurka @steffenhurka.bsky.social · 25/01/2024

Our new article "Policy complexity and implementation performance in the European Union" is now available open access at Regulation & Governance (with Max Haag and Constantin Kaplaner) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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🉑 𝚖𝚒𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚎𝚕 𝚑𝚘𝚠𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚝 〽️ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 @howlettm.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Just out and Open Access in Regulation & Governance - "“Is Lobbying for Losers?”: Corporate Behavior and Canadian Military Procurement Contracting" by Andrea Migone, David Chen, Bryan Evans, Alex Howlett, & Michael Howlett

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Regulation & Governance @reggovjournal.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

A fitting piece from the #RegGovArchive given mounting trade wars. “How the World Trade Organization Shapes Regulatory Governance” What aspects of this legal ordering will endure?

Abstract:

The World Trade Organization (WTO) arguably shapes regulatory governance in more countries to a greater extent than any other international organization. This article provides a new framework for assessing the broader transnational regulatory implications of the WTO as part of a transnational legal order (TLO) in terms of four dimensions of regulatory change that permeate the state: (i) changes in the boundary between the market and the state (involving concomitantly market liberalization and growth of the administrative state); (ii) changes in the relative authority of institutions within the state (promoting bureaucratized and judicialized governance); (iii) changes in professional expertise engaging with state regulation (such as the role of lawyers); and (iv) changes in normative frames and accountability mechanisms for national regulation (which are trade liberal and transnational in scope). In practice, these four dimensions of change interact and build on each other. The article presents what we know to date and a framework for conducting further study of such transnational legal ordering.

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