Big audit firms as regulatory intermediaries in transnational labor governance

Due diligence and corporate disclosure initiatives effectively expand the role of professional service firms as regulatory intermediaries in the governance of conditions of production in global supply chains. In this paper, we examine the rise of the “Big Four” audit firms in the market for services connected to transnational labor governance. Through a qualitative case study of audit firms in modern slavery governance, we argue that the Big Four's political repertoire for transnational labor governance expands beyond the roles that are typically linked to their services, and promotes an agenda that touches on key debates on what constitutes proper transnational labor governance. Big audit firms engage in a variety of informal and covert influencing practices and are shown to promote an agenda of incrementalist soft‐law labor governance, opposing concrete performance targets, binding public regulation and an independent watchdog role for civil society.     

Intermediary roles in regulatory programs: Toward a role‐based framework

This paper develops a role‐based framework of intermediaries in regulatory programs. In examining the types of roles that organizations adopt in regulation and governance, we argue that roles have important implications for understanding organizational and program level dynamism and outcomes. We use the Regulator–Intermediary–rule‐Taker framework to describe how organizational roles can be adopted through assignment, appropriation, or promotion. We then go deeper into how intermediaries adopt a variety of different roles in key regulatory programs. We examine generic intermediary roles across programs that involve four main groups of activities: creating and/or organizing, coordinating between programs, supporting implementation, and voicing an opinion. All in all, our role‐based framework allows for a novel relational way to understand interorganizational and institutional dynamism in complex, interactive, and ever‐changing regulatory regimes.     

Achilles' heels of governance: Critical capacity deficits and their role in governance failures

This article assesses the usefulness of conceptions of policy capacity for understanding policy and governance outcomes. In order to shed light on this issue, it revisits the concept of governance, derives a model of basic governance types and discusses their capacity pre‐requisites. A model of capacity is developed combining competences over three levels of activities with analysis of resource capabilities at each level. This analysis is then applied to the common modes of governance. While each mode requires all types of capacity if it is to match its theoretically optimal potential, most on‐the‐ground modes do not attain their highest potential. Moreover, each mode has a critical type of capacity which serves as its principle vulnerability; its “Achilles' heel.” Without high levels of the requisite capacity, the governance mode is unlikely to perform as expected. While some hybrid modes can serve to supplement or reinforce each other and bridge capacity gaps, other mixed forms may aggravate single mode issues. Switching between modes or adopting hybrid modes is, therefore, a non‐trivial issue in which considerations of capacity issues in general and Achilles' heel capacities in particular should be a central concern.     

我国中介服务业发展中的问题及对策研究

中介服务业作为市场经济的重要组成部分，在国民经济发展中发挥着重要的作用。本分析了我国中介服务业目前存在的主要问题，如官办中介大量存在、诚信度低、执业资格审查混乱、相关的法律不健全、规模小、业务品种单一、人员素质不高等，并就这些问题提出了一些建议性对策。     

Exploring the formal and informal roles of regulatory intermediaries in transnational multistakeholder regulation

Research on regulation and regulatory processes has traditionally focused on two prominent roles: rulemaking and rule‐taking. Recently, the mediating role of third party actors, regulatory intermediaries, has started to be explored – notably in a dedicated special issue of the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The present special issue extends this line of research by elaborating the distinction between formal and informal modes of regulatory intermediation, in the specific context of transnational multistakeholder regulation. In this introduction, we identify two key dimensions of intermediation (in)formalism: officialization and formalization. This allows us to develop a typology of intermediation in multistakeholder regulatory processes: formal, interpretive, alternative, and emergent. Leveraging examples from the papers in this special issue, we discuss how these four types of intermediation coexist and evolve over time. Finally, we elaborate on the implications of our typology for regulatory processes and outcomes.     

Temporary legislation,better regulation,and experimentalist governance: An empirical study

This article presents the findings of an extensive multi‐method empirical study that explored the relationship between temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. Temporary (or “sunset”) legislation – statutory provisions enacted for a limited time and set to expire unless their validity is extended – is often hailed as a key tool for promoting experimental and better regulation. Despite the importance of temporary legislation and the burgeoning theoretical scholarship on the subject, there is still a dearth of empirical studies about how temporary legislation is used in practice. The lack of empirical evidence creates a lacuna in at least three areas of theoretical scholarship, concerning temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. This paper is a first step to fill this gap.     

Stakeholder governance of organ transplantation: A desirable model for inducing evidence-based medicine?

Medical governance should secure and apply appropriate expertise, accommodate stakeholder interests, and promote social values. The most common form of governance, public (agency) rulemaking by government agencies, usually involves supplementing in-house expertise through advisory committees. An alternative, private (stakeholder) rulemaking, involves delegating the authority for developing rules directly to stakeholders, who often command relevant expertise, including that arising out of tacit knowledge. The possible advantages and disadvantages of agency and stakeholder rulemaking in medical governance can be assessed both from what we know about these forms in general and from experience with a prominent example of stakeholder rulemaking; that is, governance of the US organ transplantation system. It appears that this governance has been exceptionally successful in promoting evidence-based medicine. The stakeholder role in the governance of transplantation could be replicated in other areas by creating meaningful stakes to engage stakeholders and by increasing isolation from legislative politics through an independent funding source and circumscribed oversight.     

Lijphart goes regional: Different patterns of consensus in Swiss democracies

This article addresses the relationships among the main political institutions of the two dozen cantonal democracies which constitute the Swiss federal state. By replicating Lijphart's analysis in the Swiss subnational context, the article seeks to explain the relationships of the political-institutional variables in the Swiss cantons. The main finding of the article is that in contrast to international comparisons, the cantons cannot be classified along the continuum of majoritarian and consensus democracies. However, the Swiss cantonal democracies practice clearly distinguishable forms of power sharing. Based on a factor analysis and a cluster analysis, it is possible to distinguish a two-dimensional pattern of cantonal democracies and five groups of cantons. Although there are a number of different procedures to achieve political stability through division of power in the cantons, the different characteristics of power sharing can, essentially – and with reference to Switzerland's central institutions – perfectly well be situated on a single axis; namely, on that between pronounced direct citizen involvement and broadly supported government coalitions.     

Making sense of multilevel governance and governance coordination in Brazil: The case of the Bolsa Verde Programme

Brazil is an example of a challenging governance context par excellence: continental size, multi-levelled governance structures and diverse administrative cultures meet with ambitious, large-scale policy needs and objectives. The multilevel governance approach is applied here to analyse implementation and governance coordination of the Bolsa Verde Programme (BVP). Through a close reading of the narratives told by three programme officials – and zooming in on jointly exercised governance functions known from the metagovernance approach – we analysed how BVP’s programmatic governance coordination was made sense of. The analysis showed that our interviewees were well aware of the shortcomings of the governance coordination in BVP, understood as rather hierarchical, centrally driven and often tackling challenges of vertical multi-actor coordination in a reactive ad-hoc manner. However, since the implementers have been able to creatively and skilfully solve governance coordination challenges, possibilities for developing more systematic and inclusive (meta)governance approaches seem feasible.     

Balancing experimentalist and hierarchical governance in European Union electricity and telecommunications regulation: A matter of degrees

While the widespread diffusion of experimentalism across sectors and polities is well documented, less is known about the extent of the shift to this non‐hierarchical form of governance, which continues to coexist with traditional hierarchical governance and involves more inclusive rulemaking and revision based on review of alternative implementation experiences. By comparing and process‐tracing electricity and telecommunications regulation in the European Union, we find diversity in experimentalism over time and across two sectors often considered similar. We explain varying degrees of experimentalism with strategic uncertainty and the constellation of preferences, which we label “de facto polyarchy.” Thus, we confirm the emphasis on uncertainty documented in the experimentalist literature, while addressing a conventional critique by also highlighting the relevance of “politics.” Moreover, while corroborating the common spread of experimentalism, we suggest that an analytical framework based on ideal types offers the best route forward to develop comparative analysis of experimentalism and non‐hierarchical forms of governance more broadly.     

市场中介组织：涵义及类别的探讨

本从多层面界定了市场中介组织的概念,并从不同的视角对市场中介组织进行了分类。     

Risk and the limits of governance: Exploring varied patterns of risk‐based governance across Europe

Risk‐based approaches to governance are widely promoted as universally applicable foundations for improving the quality, efficiency, and rationality of governance across policy domains. Premised on the idea that governance cannot eliminate all adverse outcomes, these approaches provide a method for establishing priorities and allocating scarce resources, and, in so doing, rationalise the limits of what governance interventions can, and should, achieve. Yet cursory observation suggests that risk‐based approaches have spread unevenly across countries. Based on a comparison of the UK, France, and Germany, this article explores the ways in which, and why, such approaches have “colonised” governance regimes in the UK, but have had much more limited application in France and Germany. We argue that the institutionally patterned adoption of risk‐based governance across these three countries is related to how entrenched governance norms and accountability structures within their national polities handle both the identification and acceptance of adverse governance outcomes.     

Between governance-driven democratisation and democracy-driven governance: Explaining changes in participatory governance in the case of Barcelona

Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top-down “closed” spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) vice-versa, the mechanisms through which bottom-up, open spaces can be co-opted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of ‘governance-driven democratization’ describes top-down and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracy-driven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizens’ demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they co-exist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance.     

Between regulatory field structuring and organizational roles: Intermediation in the field of sustainable urban development

Recent contributions in the domains of governance and regulation elucidate the importance of rule‐intermediation (RI), the role that organizations adopt to bridge actors with regulatory or “rulemaking” roles and those with target or “rule‐taking” roles. Intermediation not only enables the diffusion and translation of regulatory norms, but also allows for the representation of different actors in policymaking arenas. While prior studies have explored the roles that such RIs adopt to facilitate their intermediation functions, we have yet to consider how field‐level structuring processes influence (and are influenced by) the various and changing roles adopted by RI. In this study we focus on the mutually constitutive relations between field‐level change processes and the evolving roles of RIs by studying the rise of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)/Local Governments for Sustainability, an RI serving as a bridge for sustainable urban development policies between the United Nations and local authorities. Using ICLEI as an illustrative case, we theorize four different processes of regulatory field structuration: problematization, role specialization, marketization, and orchestrated decentralization. We discuss their implications for RI roles in the field and further theorize the changing dynamics of trickle‐up intermediation processes as an RI gains power and influence.     

Agencies’ formal independence and credible commitment in the Latin American regulatory state: A comparative analysis of 8 countries and 13 sectors

This article tests functional and institutional explanations for the different levels of formal independence of regulatory agencies in Latin America. The analysis is grounded in an original database of the formal independence level of 104 regulators in 8 countries and 13 regulatory sectors. The results challenge a central claim of the credible commitment hypothesis as they indicate that privatization is not a significant determinant of agency independence nor are utility regulators more likely to be independent than other economic regulators. Veto players are positively correlated with formal independence, indicating that in developing countries they operate together as credibility‐enhancing mechanisms, rather than as functional equivalents, as previous studies on developed countries have shown. Democratization is positively correlated with formal independence, whereas trade opening and vulnerability to international pressures has no significant impact. Hence, this article enhances the understanding of the delegation of regulatory powers to formally independent agencies in developing countries.     

Tackling unemployment in China: state capacity and governance issues

Abstract

This paper considers China's state capacity and changing governance as revealed through its policies to tackle unemployment. Despite high levels of growth, economic restructuring has resulted in rising unemployment over the last decade. The Chinese state has been able to manage job losses from state enterprises, demonstrating some state capacity in relation to this sector and some persistent command economy governance mechanisms. However both design and implementation of policies to compensate and assist particular groups among the unemployed have been shaped by weak state capacity in several other areas. First, capacity to gather accurate employment data is limited, meaning local and central governments do not have a good understanding of the extent and nature of unemployment. Second, the sustainability of supposedly mandatory unemployment insurance schemes is threatened by poor capacity to enforce participation. Third, poor central state capacity to ensure local governments implement policies effectively leads to poor unemployment insurance fund capacity, resulting in provision for only a narrow segment of the unemployed and low quality employment services. Although the adoption of unemployment insurance (and its extension to employers and employees in the private sector), the introduction of a Labour Contract Law in 2007, and the delivery of employment services by private businesses indicate a shift towards the use of new governance mechanisms based on entitlement, contract and private sector delivery of public-sector goods, that shift is undermined by poor state capacity in relation to some of these new mechanisms.     

Politicians,regulators, and regulatory governance: The neglected sides of the story

We offer a series of reflective insights about the state and direction of studies related to the politics of regulation. Notably we argue that the field is characterized by persisting divisions between Americanists and Europeanists. Largely focused on the actions taken by political principals, the former regularly report a substantial politicization of regulatory behavior. Reflecting on recent developments in US politics however, we show that political influence could be overestimated in the United States. Symmetrically, this same influence could be underestimated by Europeanists, who for now have largely focused on regulators and agencies. This is notably suggested by a discussion of recent development in European politics, as revealed by contributions systematically measuring agency politicization in Western European democracies. On this basis, we identify some promising research questions and agendas for future studies on the politics of regulation.     

Experimentalist governance in the European Union: A commentary

Sabel and Zeitlin's Experimentalist Governance offers an insight into European governance in those cases where the EU institutions do not have clear competence and where member states are not prepared to accept a unified policy on a problem at hand. Experimentalist Governance identifies four steps of action: agree on common goals, have lower levels propose ways to meet goals, then report on their meeting of goals, and, finally, periodically reevaluate the review procedures. By looking at the developments in EU policymaking through the lens of experimentalist governance (EG), one obtains an appreciation of how goals might be achieved that would otherwise not likely have been achieved through the community method. Sabel and Zeitlin highlight how EG can be effective in obtaining results, integrating peers, and incorporating deliberation, and offer a different way to deal with accountability and legitimacy. This article closes by taking the next step, namely, asking what challenges EG poses to democratic processes.     

Corporate governance and political impediments to regional harmonization: cases from East Asia

Abstract

Is the harmonization of financial regulatory regimes possible in East Asia? Focusing on corporate governance, which many see as a critical part of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and which is also seen as unresponsive to calls for change, this paper argues that such harmonization is possible, but that it will not be according to the standards advocated by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and other international organizations. At present, actors generally feign compliance with these international rules and standards. The pattern of noncompliance is reflective of two types of regulatory models at work in East Asia, which correspond to democratic and nondemocratic regimes. The manner by which these political institutions mediate the influence of key actors determines corporate governance outcomes. Three cases illustrate the key dynamics: Singapore (nondemocracy), South Korea (democracy), and pre- and post-World War II Japan (change from nondemocracy to democracy). By identifying the key actors that determine regulatory outcomes, this paper points to a more realistic regulatory framework. This alternative framework is a compromise between the standards advocated by international organizations and the domestic political realities of East Asia.