Delegation aus der Sicht der Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Explaining regulatory autonomy in EU network sectors: Varieties of utility regulation?

This article explains variation in the autonomy in the range of activities that European regulators perform. By focusing on 102 regulators of four network sectors (electricity, gas, telecom, and railways), we test for functional and institutional explanations. The findings indicate that the inclusion of institutional factors matters for our understanding of recent changes in the governance of European network sectors. Reforms toward the independent agency form of governance and the range of competencies granted to sector regulators seem to be shaped not only by international functional pressures but also by domestic institutional factors. Beyond the credibility hypothesis, we find that national governments grant less regulatory autonomy to utility regulators the more coordinated an economy is and the more veto players are present. On the contrary, common law countries are associated with higher levels of regulatory autonomy.     

Four Scenarios of Development and the Role of Economic Policy

We ask which economic policies can help a country create the most favourable conditions for development. We observe that the dynamics of several development indicators can be grouped into four clusters, each cluster corresponding to a different combination of growth and changes in inequality. Based on this observation, we define four different development scenarios and use limited dependent variable regressions to study how structural and policy factors affect a country's probability to achieve the most (or the least) favourable of these scenarios. Our results point to a comforting picture: through the choice of appropriate policies countries can effectively increase their chances to achieve the most favourable development scenario.     

Reforming the World Health Organization: what influence do the BRICS wield?

The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently undergoing fundamental reform that is intended to impact its programmes and priority setting and its financial and governing structures. Within the reform debates, new relations of powers are emerging among traditional donors and emerging economies such as the ‘BRICS’: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These five emerging economies have formally committed ‘to strengthen and legitimise the WHO as the coordinating authority in global health’ through the principle of multilateralism. In this paper, the results of a qualitative study – based on 21 key informant interviews – that seeks to better understand BRICS’ engagement in this organisation and the extent to which their action enables these countries to influence the reform process were presented. The results show that individual BRICS countries found natural pairings with each other on both particular elements of the reform, notably governance and WHO financing, and specific health issues. While numerous examples of individual BRICS countries seeking to raise the profile of specific health issues were found, some evidence of a coordinated effort to influence reform as a bloc was also found. Although this was largely limited to rhetorical announcements of support in formal Declarations and Communiqués, it nevertheless articulates a vision of the WHO as an organisation with a broad mandate delivered with sufficient, predictable funding.     

The enactment of public participation in rulemaking: A comparative analysis

This study analyzes the enactment of public participation in rulemaking within the European Union and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries. It relies on an original dataset of administrative procedural acts and administrative laws concerning the making of delegated legislation. As 12 out of 39 countries enacted a procedure of notification, publication, and consultation between 1995 and 2015, the study focuses on courts while controlling for other domestic institutional determinants of legislative adoption and countries’ interdependence. The empirical findings show that countries with a highly independent judiciary system are less likely to enact a comprehensive provision for public participation in rulemaking. This finding highlights a paradox, namely that political systems are more likely to adopt rulemaking to enhance democratic legitimacy if they are characterized by a judicial system that does not actively pursue the legality of rulemaking.     

The activities of university knowledge transfer offices: towards the third mission in Italy

Establishing deeper engagement with industry and society has recently become a key concern of universities. To pursue this goal, universities—as well as other public research organizations—have started to reorganize internal resources, to redefine their activities and policies, and to redesign their overall knowledge transfer (KT) business models. As a consequence, in several countries a wide heterogeneity exists in the types of KT models adopted and in the outcomes arising from KT activities. By performing a cluster analysis and a multinomial logit regression on an extensive dataset that almost covers the entire population of Italian universities, in this study we analyze (1) whether models of KT characterized by a broader engagement with society are gradually substituting models more focused on technology commercialization, and (2) which factors related to the availability of resources and universities’ strategic intention better explain existing differences. Insights from the study might help university managers to define the most appropriate actions to fully undertake the implementation of the university third mission.