Martino Maggetti
Biographic Data
| ID | 3979217 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martino Maggetti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martino |
| FAMILY NAME | Maggetti |
| SIGNATURE | MAGGETTI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lausanne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7263-3726 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 825 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Reciprocal trust and distrust in artificial intelligence systems
Strengthening Trust by Design
How can the design of regulatory regimes foster trust in those regimes? In food safety, finance, and data protection regulation, regulatory frameworks have been reformed to restore trust after regulatory failures. Using fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis, this paper seeks to identify how key design choices—centralization of competencies in one versus multiple regulatory agencies, agency independence, mandated interactions, and rules perce…
Designing Integrated Policies for the Twin Transition
Democratic governance faces the intertwined imperatives of managing the transformative risks and opportunities of digitalization, particularly stemming from artificial intelligence (AI), while achieving environmental sustainability within planetary boundaries. Policymakers worldwide, particularly those involved in the European Union's “twin transition” agenda, often depict these transformations as mutually reinforcing; nonetheless, complementarit…
Empowered but Challenged
In the wake of digitalization, and even more since the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in 2018, data protection authorities (DPAs) across Europe have gained significant power, establishing themselves as increasingly influential politico‐administrative actors with the potential to shape regulation and governance across various policy areas. Despite their growing prominence, the evolution of their role within wid…
Policy Spandrels
This article introduces the concept of policy spandrels to make sense of public policies producing second‐order effects that are unintentional from the perspective of policy design and yet are fraught with consequences. By analogy with architectural spandrels—leftover spaces that can be used for unforeseen purposes—policy change can be enabled by a new structure of opportunity emerging from prior decisions, in a way that was not intended by polic…
Trust in multilevel governance settings
How trust matters for the performance and legitimacy of regulatory regimes
Trust is expected to play a vital role in regulatory regimes. However, how trust affects the performance and legitimacy of these regimes is poorly understood. Our study examines how the interplay of trust and distrust relationships among and toward political, administrative, and regulatory actors shapes perceptions of performance and legitimacy. Drawing on cross‐country survey data measuring trust and distrust among various actors within regulato…
From international law to subnational practices
The implementation of international human right treaties is particularly challenging, especially when they entail obligations that apply at the subnational level. In this article, we examine how international law intermediaries translate and use international treaties in subnational policymaking processes. We develop a dedicated analytical framework, and we derive a typology, characterizing different types of intermediaries and systematizing the …
Denationalization and the recentring of political authority in multilevel governance
Different streams of political research have pointed to two macro‐phenomena that appear as opposite at first glance: On the one hand, the increasing delegation of competencies to jurisdictions beyond the central government, resulting in the denationalization of political authority. On the other, the passing of reforms that reassert the centre of the nation state through policy integration and administrative coordination. In this article, we argue…
Empirical research on policy integration
Research on policy integration has become an important part of public policy scholarship by analyzing how policymakers create linkages between policy subsystems to deal with complex policy problems. To develop this research program further, it is crucial to know how policy integration relates to broader theoretical and methodological developments in the field of public policy studies. This article reviews the empirical literature on policy integr…
Mapping and Unpacking Global Governance Bodies
Several recent studies have pointed to the increasing relevance of relatively informal, non-treaty-based global governance bodies (GGBs). Yet, a systematic fine-grained assessment of these bodies and their implications for global governance are still pending. To what extent, do non-treaty-based GGBs constitute a truly novel type of governance body, distinct from traditional treaty-based international organizations (IOs)? How do the distinctive fe…
Multi‐level Implementation of International Law
Subnational entities in federal states typically retain a degree of sovereignty and enjoy leeway in implementation, raising questions such as whether—and how—international law is actually implemented at the subnational level. This article sheds light on these questions, using two contrasted case studies in Switzerland: The Istanbul Convention on domestic violence and the European Union (EU) Directive 2016/680 on data protection. Based on a docume…
Happily unaccountable? Perceptions of accountability by public managers
This paper opens up the black box of agencies’ accountability relationships and zooms in on their top managers and the perceptions of accountability thereof. So far, very few studies have examined how agency managers perceive and experience attempts to control the public sector organizations that they manage. The paper seeks to address this gap through a focus on “felt” accountability, denoting (1) a manager’s (more or less high) expectation to h…
Informal Europeanization processes and domestic governance networks
The influence of the European Union on national power structures, actors' institutional opportunities, and governance networks is well established in cases of Europeanization processes unfolding in member states or associated countries for which a formal agreement is in place. This article focuses instead on Europeanization processes that are more informal and do not include formal agreements but bottom‐up dynamics. Empirically, we analyze the co…
Policy integration, problem-solving, and the coronavirus disease crisis
The coronavirus disease pandemic has exposed differences in the capacity of governments around the world to integrate and coordinate different policy instruments into a coherent response. In this article, we conceptualize and empirically examine policy integration in responses to the coronavirus disease crisis in 35 countries. We then discuss how the interplay between restrictions, health protection, and economic policy has been articulated betwe…
Public sector accountability styles in Europe comparing accountability and control of agencies in the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK
This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marked by convergence as well as the resilience of national differences. The concept of accountability st…
How to tame the beast
European regulatory networks are increasingly becoming crucial venues for European governance. They typically emerged as relatively loose groups of national authorities in charge of meta-regulating sectoral policies. However, in the medium term, they experienced dissimilar developmental patterns. On the one hand, some networks (such as the Committee of European Securities Regulators – CESR) have been progressively institutionalized, transformed i…
More is less
Researchers have argued that political parties in government matter for policy integration reforms, but the way they do so remains somewhat undetermined. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by tackling two interrelated open questions: How does the presence of different political parties in government, which rely on policy programs on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, shape the intensity of policy integration reforms? To what…
Conflictual Accountability
In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with im…
Necessary conditions for policy integration and administrative coordination reforms
In this article, we explore the determinants of reforms intending to integrate policies and coordinate administrative units by focusing on necessary conditions. Firstly, we elaborate theoretical expectations about potential necessary conditions for cross-sectoral reforms. Secondly, we conduct a condition-oriented fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine our expectations, based on an original data set comparing policy integration and …
Understanding Felt Accountability
The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived t…
Covid‐19 – A Political Science Perspective
The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly increased the use of knowledge and scientific expertise in policymaking. Governments around the world have relied on epidemiologists and virologists to formulate their non-pharmaceutical responses (e.g., lockdowns) to the massive public health crisis, and to devise and implement their health care and vaccination strategies. However, the Covid-19 pandemic is also a public policy matter. The public health cri…
National regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies
This introduction to our special issue discusses the challenges related to the cooperative and competitive interaction between national regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies within increasingly complex EU regulatory regimes. In this context, a special attention is given to the dynamic nature of multilevel processes. After presenting an overview of the contributions to the special issue, we conclude by offering three insights on p…
Linking democratic anchorage and regulatory authority
Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly questioned the democraticness and the authority of transnational multi‐stakeholder organizations, especially those that regulate the internet. To contribute to this discussion, we studied the “democratic anchorages” and the regulatory authority of 23 internet regulators. In particular, we conducted a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis assessing whether and which anchorages correspond to necessary…
Exploring the Dynamics of Delegation Over Time
According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the “principal” while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do g…
De facto independence after delegation
The phenomenon of delegating public authority from elected politicians (or ministries headed by elected politicians) to formally independent regulatory agencies (RAs) is becoming increasingly widespread. This paper examines the relation between formal independence, as prescribed in the constitutions of agencies, and de facto independence. Toward this end, it conceptualizes and assesses de facto independence of RAs, and discusses organizational, i…
Problems (and solutions) in the measurement of policy diffusion mechanisms
A growing literature in public policy, comparative politics and international relations has studied how the policies of one unit (e.g. country, federal state or city) are influenced by the policies of other units – that is, how policies diffuse. This article provides a meta-analysis of 114 studies, demonstrating persisting inconsistencies in the measurement of the mechanisms driving policy diffusion processes. Different indicators are used to mea…
Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy
This article first provides a selective overview of the literature on bureaucratic autonomy and identifies different approaches to this topic. The second section discusses three major sets of open questions, which will be tackled in the contributions to this special issue: the subjective, dynamic and relational nature of autonomy; the complex linkages between tasks, organizational forms, and national path dependencies on the one hand and autonomy…
The many uses of regulatory impact assessment
Research on regulation has crossed paths with the literature on policy instruments, showing that regulatory policy instruments contain cognitive and normative beliefs about policy. Thus, their usage stacks the deck in favor of one type of actor or one type of regulatory solution. In this article, we challenge the assumption that there is a predetermined relationship between ideas, regulatory policy instruments, and outcomes. We argue that differe…
The role of independent regulatory agencies in policy-making
This article examines the role of formally independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in policy-making, focusing on six cases concerning the revision of crucial laws related to the competencies of the investigated IRA. These cases were selected from three small European countries (the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland) and two policy areas (finance and competition). After collecting documental and survey information on the participation and weight of …
Designing Research With Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)
Recent years have witnessed a host of innovations for conducting research with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Concurrently, important issues surrounding its uses have been highlighted. In this article, we seek to help users design QCA studies. We argue that establishing inference with QCA involves three intertwined design components: first, clarifying the question of external validity; second, ensuring internal validity; and third, expli…
Transnational Bureaucratic Politics
This contribution introduces our symposium by highlighting four distinctive aspects of transnational governance from a bureaucratic politics perspective: the emergence of transnational institutions, their functioning, their impact on the domestic level, and the diffusion of regulatory standards. The general argument is that many accounts of transnational governance seem to be overly optimistic about the conditions for effective problem‐solving an…
The Integration and Coordination of Public Policies
This article undertakes a systematic comparative review of research on policy integration and coordination. Specifically, it compares studies focusing on “policy integration” with those using “joined-up government” or “whole-of-government” as key analytical concepts. It discusses differences and similarities between the two groups of articles in terms of empirical and theoretical focus as well as research design, and concludes by suggesting that …
The rewards of cooperation
Networks famously epitomize the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ as governing structures for exercising control and coordination besides hierarchies and markets. Their distinctive features are their horizontality, the interdependence among member actors and an interactive decision‐making style. Networks are expected to increase the problem‐solving capacity of political systems in a context of growing social complexity, where political auth…
The Principal–Agent Framework and Independent Regulatory Agencies
The goal of this contribution is to discuss the application of the principal–agent framework to the study of interactions between elected politicians – the principal – and independent regulatory agencies – the agent. Through a review of recent research we suggest that the principal–agent framework, despite its parsimony and analytical leverage, requires considerable refinement to make sense of these relations. Indeed, evidence on the functioning …
Multilevel governance and problem‐solving
In this article, we suggest that the governance of problems shapes the institutional dynamics of multilevel governance (MLG) polities. MLG arrangements—processes and institutions that enable policy‐making across different jurisdictional levels wherein both public authorities and non‐state actors are involved—can or cannot succeed in solving policy problems and at the same time they could create new problems. We argue that the problem‐solving capa…
Integration, functional differentiation and problem‐solving in multilevel governance
The European Union (EU) is currently facing unprecedented challenges to its problem‐solving capacity, such as those represented by pressing transnational crises and by bottom‐up criticisms towards the European integration process. Moreover, the EU is said to compensate its weak input legitimacy with an enhanced problem‐solving capacity. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself has remained remarkably vague in the multilevel governance (MLG) …
The media accountability of independent regulatory agencies
Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) are increasingly attracting academic and societal attention, as they represent the institutional cornerstone of the regulatory state and play a key role in policy-making. Besides the expected benefits in terms of credibility and efficiency, these regulators are said to bring about a ‘democratic deficit’, following their statutory separation from democratic institutions. Consequently, a ‘multi-pronged system …
Necessary conditions for policy integration and administrative coordination reforms
In this article, we explore the determinants of reforms intending to integrate policies and coordinate administrative units by focusing on necessary conditions. Firstly, we elaborate theoretical expectations about potential necessary conditions for cross-sectoral reforms. Secondly, we conduct a condition-oriented fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine our expectations, based on an original data set comparing policy integration and …
Understanding Felt Accountability
The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived t…
Qualitative Comparative Analysis and the Study of Policy Processes
Given the increasing popularity of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for the study of public policy and policy processes, this article offers a review of two key issues: multiple configurational causality and temporality. On the one hand, the study of multiple configurational causal relations allows researchers to deal with the extremely complex set of elements that interact in policy processes. However, this task poses the challenge of bala…
The Politics of Network Governance in Europe
Networks are considered increasingly important for policy-making. The literature on new modes of governance in Europe suggests that their horizontal coordination capacity and flexible and informal structures are particularly suitable for governing the multilevel architecture of the European polity. However, empirical evidence about the effects of networks on policy-making and public policies is still quite limited. This article uses the case of t…
How trust matters for the performance and legitimacy of regulatory regimes
Trust is expected to play a vital role in regulatory regimes. However, how trust affects the performance and legitimacy of these regimes is poorly understood. Our study examines how the interplay of trust and distrust relationships among and toward political, administrative, and regulatory actors shapes perceptions of performance and legitimacy. Drawing on cross‐country survey data measuring trust and distrust among various actors within regulato…
What's the Problem? Multilevel Governance and Problem‐Solving
The study of multilevel governance ( MLG ) is fundamentally concerned with the capacity of MLG to effectively deal with policy problems. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself remains vague. Moreover, MLG research prioritizes questions of structure and agency, while neglecting the role and nature of policy problems themselves. This symposium defines problem‐solving in both procedural and operational terms. The introduction reviews relevant…
Exploring the Dynamics of Delegation Over Time
According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the “principal” while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do g…
Not Quite the Same
This article compares the role of regulatory intermediaries in the governance of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in Australia and Switzerland. We argue that the creation, selection, and activation of specific intermediaries depend on the organizational capacity of the regulator and on the potential of the intermediary to be captured by the target. To limit the risk of capture of intermediaries where the regulated industries are powerful, regu…
Assessing disproportionality
Contemporary theories of the policy process typically assume that policy responses tend to go through long periods of stasis alternated with occasional bursts of intense activity. The concept of policy punctuations has been put forward to denote large-scale changes in public policies that take place in crisis moments. However, research on the dynamics of policy overreaction and underreaction is still in its infancy. It has mostly focused on eithe…
Policy integration, problem-solving, and the coronavirus disease crisis
The coronavirus disease pandemic has exposed differences in the capacity of governments around the world to integrate and coordinate different policy instruments into a coherent response. In this article, we conceptualize and empirically examine policy integration in responses to the coronavirus disease crisis in 35 countries. We then discuss how the interplay between restrictions, health protection, and economic policy has been articulated betwe…
Institutional change and the evolution of the regulatory state
This article examines institutional change in a case that was expected to be particularly resilient but showed considerable structural transformation: the institutionalization of the regulatory state in Switzerland. This process is illustrated through the establishment of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in four areas: banking and finance; telecommunications; electricity; and competition. The theoretical framework developed by Streeck, Thel…
Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too
Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) were created in various sectors and on different governmental levels to implement liberalization policies. This paper investigates the link between IRAs' independence, which is said to promote regulatory credibility and the use of technical expertise, and their accountability, which is related to the need for controlling and legitimizing independent regulators. The literature on the regulatory state anticipa…
De facto independence after delegation
The phenomenon of delegating public authority from elected politicians (or ministries headed by elected politicians) to formally independent regulatory agencies (RAs) is becoming increasingly widespread. This paper examines the relation between formal independence, as prescribed in the constitutions of agencies, and de facto independence. Toward this end, it conceptualizes and assesses de facto independence of RAs, and discusses organizational, i…
The role of independent regulatory agencies in policy-making
This article examines the role of formally independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in policy-making, focusing on six cases concerning the revision of crucial laws related to the competencies of the investigated IRA. These cases were selected from three small European countries (the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland) and two policy areas (finance and competition). After collecting documental and survey information on the participation and weight of …
The Independence of Regulatory Authorities
This chapter offers a theoretical and empirical assessment of the distinctive feature of regulatory agencies, namely their independence. First, we discuss the formal and informal aspects of regulatory independence, their conceptualization, and their operationalization. Second, we present empirical research explaining the variation of formal independence across countries and sectors. We also point out that formal independence is neither a necessar…
Le problème de l'interdépendance dans la comparaison des politiques publiques infranationales
Un des problèmes majeurs de la méthode comparative, et notamment de la comparaison entre politiques publiques infranationales, est le fait que les phénomènes à comparer, au lieu de consister en unités analytiques indépendantes les unes des autres, sont au contraire susceptibles de s’influencer mutuellement. Cette contribution aborde la problématique de l’interdépendance, avec une attention particulière aux différences entre politiques publiques i…
The many uses of regulatory impact assessment
Research on regulation has crossed paths with the literature on policy instruments, showing that regulatory policy instruments contain cognitive and normative beliefs about policy. Thus, their usage stacks the deck in favor of one type of actor or one type of regulatory solution. In this article, we challenge the assumption that there is a predetermined relationship between ideas, regulatory policy instruments, and outcomes. We argue that differe…
The media accountability of independent regulatory agencies
Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) are increasingly attracting academic and societal attention, as they represent the institutional cornerstone of the regulatory state and play a key role in policy-making. Besides the expected benefits in terms of credibility and efficiency, these regulators are said to bring about a ‘democratic deficit’, following their statutory separation from democratic institutions. Consequently, a ‘multi-pronged system …
Designing Research in the Social Sciences
Social Sciences and Research Design Conceptual Analysis Causal Analysis Statistical Research Designs for Causal Inference Temporality Heterogeneity Interdependence Conclusions: Connecting the Dots
The Politics of Network Governance in Europe
Networks are considered increasingly important for policy-making. The literature on new modes of governance in Europe suggests that their horizontal coordination capacity and flexible and informal structures are particularly suitable for governing the multilevel architecture of the European polity. However, empirical evidence about the effects of networks on policy-making and public policies is still quite limited. This article uses the case of t…
Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too
Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) were created in various sectors and on different governmental levels to implement liberalization policies. This paper investigates the link between IRAs' independence, which is said to promote regulatory credibility and the use of technical expertise, and their accountability, which is related to the need for controlling and legitimizing independent regulators. The literature on the regulatory state anticipa…
Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy
This article first provides a selective overview of the literature on bureaucratic autonomy and identifies different approaches to this topic. The second section discusses three major sets of open questions, which will be tackled in the contributions to this special issue: the subjective, dynamic and relational nature of autonomy; the complex linkages between tasks, organizational forms, and national path dependencies on the one hand and autonomy…
Institutional change and the evolution of the regulatory state
This article examines institutional change in a case that was expected to be particularly resilient but showed considerable structural transformation: the institutionalization of the regulatory state in Switzerland. This process is illustrated through the establishment of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in four areas: banking and finance; telecommunications; electricity; and competition. The theoretical framework developed by Streeck, Thel…
The rewards of cooperation
Networks famously epitomize the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ as governing structures for exercising control and coordination besides hierarchies and markets. Their distinctive features are their horizontality, the interdependence among member actors and an interactive decision‐making style. Networks are expected to increase the problem‐solving capacity of political systems in a context of growing social complexity, where political auth…
The Political Communication of Independent Regulatory Agencies
Since independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) became key actors in European regulatory governance in the 1990s, a significant share of policy‐making has been carried out by organizations that are neither democratically elected nor directly accountable to elected politicians. In this context, public communication plays an important role. On the one hand, regulatory agencies might try to use communication to raise their accountability and thereby to…
Regulating side by side
We have witnessed a rise of hybrid regulators in transnational governance, and the regimes they form have grown in number, complexity, and importance. They are directly involved in rule making, provide crucial information, and conduct supportive tasks, such as arbitration, certification, or mobilisation, to other rule makers. In our paper, we examine the complex organisational ecology in the transnational governance regime of environmental sustai…
Qualitative Comparative Analysis and the Study of Policy Processes
Given the increasing popularity of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for the study of public policy and policy processes, this article offers a review of two key issues: multiple configurational causality and temporality. On the one hand, the study of multiple configurational causal relations allows researchers to deal with the extremely complex set of elements that interact in policy processes. However, this task poses the challenge of bala…
Transnational Bureaucratic Politics
This contribution introduces our symposium by highlighting four distinctive aspects of transnational governance from a bureaucratic politics perspective: the emergence of transnational institutions, their functioning, their impact on the domestic level, and the diffusion of regulatory standards. The general argument is that many accounts of transnational governance seem to be overly optimistic about the conditions for effective problem‐solving an…
Problems (and solutions) in the measurement of policy diffusion mechanisms
A growing literature in public policy, comparative politics and international relations has studied how the policies of one unit (e.g. country, federal state or city) are influenced by the policies of other units – that is, how policies diffuse. This article provides a meta-analysis of 114 studies, demonstrating persisting inconsistencies in the measurement of the mechanisms driving policy diffusion processes. Different indicators are used to mea…
Assessing disproportionality
Contemporary theories of the policy process typically assume that policy responses tend to go through long periods of stasis alternated with occasional bursts of intense activity. The concept of policy punctuations has been put forward to denote large-scale changes in public policies that take place in crisis moments. However, research on the dynamics of policy overreaction and underreaction is still in its infancy. It has mostly focused on eithe…
Not Quite the Same
This article compares the role of regulatory intermediaries in the governance of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in Australia and Switzerland. We argue that the creation, selection, and activation of specific intermediaries depend on the organizational capacity of the regulator and on the potential of the intermediary to be captured by the target. To limit the risk of capture of intermediaries where the regulated industries are powerful, regu…
Comparative Regulatory Regimes and Public Policy
This chapter offers a selective critical review of studies on regulatory regimes in member states and at the EU level, especially regarding the most recent advancements on multi-level regulatory regimes, accountability, and legitimacy. We will briefly examine theoretical work dealing with the conceptualization of such regimes, and compare and contrast it to other notions that are used to denote similar phenomena, i.e. that of so-called regulatory…
The Integration and Coordination of Public Policies
This article undertakes a systematic comparative review of research on policy integration and coordination. Specifically, it compares studies focusing on “policy integration” with those using “joined-up government” or “whole-of-government” as key analytical concepts. It discusses differences and similarities between the two groups of articles in terms of empirical and theoretical focus as well as research design, and concludes by suggesting that …
Multilevel governance and problem‐solving
In this article, we suggest that the governance of problems shapes the institutional dynamics of multilevel governance (MLG) polities. MLG arrangements—processes and institutions that enable policy‐making across different jurisdictional levels wherein both public authorities and non‐state actors are involved—can or cannot succeed in solving policy problems and at the same time they could create new problems. We argue that the problem‐solving capa…
The Principal–Agent Framework and Independent Regulatory Agencies
The goal of this contribution is to discuss the application of the principal–agent framework to the study of interactions between elected politicians – the principal – and independent regulatory agencies – the agent. Through a review of recent research we suggest that the principal–agent framework, despite its parsimony and analytical leverage, requires considerable refinement to make sense of these relations. Indeed, evidence on the functioning …
What's the Problem? Multilevel Governance and Problem‐Solving
The study of multilevel governance ( MLG ) is fundamentally concerned with the capacity of MLG to effectively deal with policy problems. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself remains vague. Moreover, MLG research prioritizes questions of structure and agency, while neglecting the role and nature of policy problems themselves. This symposium defines problem‐solving in both procedural and operational terms. The introduction reviews relevant…
Integration, functional differentiation and problem‐solving in multilevel governance
The European Union (EU) is currently facing unprecedented challenges to its problem‐solving capacity, such as those represented by pressing transnational crises and by bottom‐up criticisms towards the European integration process. Moreover, the EU is said to compensate its weak input legitimacy with an enhanced problem‐solving capacity. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself has remained remarkably vague in the multilevel governance (MLG) …
Political science (46 works) · Economics (35 works) · Law (35 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (29 works) · Public Administration (28 works) · Law (25 works) · Politics (25 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Business (22 works) · Regulation and Compliance Studies (22 works)