Entwicklungswege des regulativen Staates — Ein Vergleich zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada

The paper takes Giandomenico Majone’s characterization of the regulatory state as starting point for a comparative analysis of the structures, politics and policies of regulation in the United States and Canada. It argues that Majone’s approach only partly captures the reality of the US regulatory system and, by concentrating on the US, fails to incorporate other versions of the regulatory state. The American regulatory state is only of limited value as a reference model for the European nation states, because the characteristics of national regulatory regimes are shaped by political culture and state structures. In this regard, Canada bears a much stronger resemblance to the European nations. Therefore, its long experience with regulatory institutions and practices is likely to be more instructive for the European debates. Future analysis should focus more strongly on the filtering processes by which national responses to general trends are shaped and on the distinct paths of development resulting from these processes.