Constructing and contesting legitimacy and accountability in polycentric regulatory regimes

The legitimacy and accountability of polycentric regulatory regimes, particularly at the transnational level, has been severely criticized, and the search is on to find ways in which they can be enhanced. This paper argues that before developing even more proposals, we need to pay far greater attention to the dynamics of accountability and legitimacy relationships, and to how those in regulatory regimes respond to them. The article thus first seeks to develop a closer analysis of three key elements of legitimacy and accountability relationships which it suggests are central to these dynamics: The role of the institutional environment in the construction of legitimacy, the dialectical nature of accountability relationships, and the communicative structures through which accountability occurs and legitimacy is constructed. Second, the article explores how organizations in regulatory regimes respond, or are likely to respond, to multiple legitimacy and accountability claims, and how they themselves seek to build legitimacy in complex and dynamic situations. The arguments developed here are not normative: There is no “grand solution” proposed to the normative questions of when regulators should be considered legitimate or how to make them so. Rather, the article seeks to analyse the dynamics of legitimacy and accountability relationships as they occur in an attempt to build a more realistic foundation on which grander “how to” proposals can be built. For until we understand these dynamics, the grander, normative arguments risk being simply pipe dreams – diverting, but in the end making little difference.     

Analyzing factors influencing readmission to a battered women's shelter

Factors that distinguished first admission and readmission to an emergency woman's shelter were examined using discriminant function analysis. Records from 563 women who were residents were analyzed. Results suggest that source of income, number and developmental stage of children, and prior history of physical assault are precursors of readmissions. This study was discussed in terms of improving follow-up services to former residents of emergency shelters.     

Reviews

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post‐Stalin Era. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1990, xiv + 321 pp., £19.95

Jadwiga Staniszkis, The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991, xiii + 303 pp., £25.00, $35.00.

Richard Sakwa, Gorbachev and his Reforms, 1985–1990. London: Philip Allan, 1990, xiv + 459 pp., £35.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Julian Cooper, The Soviet Defence Industry: Conversion and Reform. London: Pinter Publishers, 1991, ix + 111 pp., £22.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Elizabeth Winiecki & Jan Winiecki, The Structural Legacy of the Soviet‐Type Economy. London: CRCE, 1992, 133 pp., £6.50 p/b.

Marsha Siefert, ed., Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, 200 pp., $35.00.

Anne White, De‐Stalinization and the House of Culture. Declining state control over leisure in the USSR, Poland and Hungary, 1953–89. London and New York: Routledge, 1990, x+195 pp., £30.00.

Deborah Adelman, The ‘Children of Perestroika’. Moscow Teenagers Talk About Their Lives and the Future. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1991, xxiii + 256 pp., $24.95.

Michael Marrese & Sándor Richter, eds, The Challenge of Simultaneous Economic Relations with East and West. London: Macmillan, 1990, xviii + 216 pp., £45.00.

David W. Hunter, Western Trade Pressure on the Soviet Union. Basingstoke: Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd, 1991, xii + 163 pp., £45.00

Pierre Maurer, La Reconciliation Sovieto‐Yougoslave, 1954–1958: Illusions et Disillusions de Tito. Cousset, Fribourg: Editions Delval, 1991, 474 pp., no price.     

Parliamentary reporting in England in the early eighteenth century an abortive attempt to influence the magazines in 1744

SUMMARY

In this article Joachim Bahlcke has re-examined the significance of the agreement of the Estates of the crown of St Wenceslas, representing Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Upper- and Lower Lusatia to a federal constitution, the Confoederatio Bohemica in 1619. He argues that this was not just an improvised response to the contingencies of the Bohemian revolt against their Habsburg king, Ferdinand of Styria, but the outcome of a lengthy process of discussion and negotiation between the Estates. He argues that they achieved a remarkable success in overcoming deeply rooted internal divisions, and produced a mature set of constitutional proposals involving significant modernizations of the traditional structures to achieve a strong federal system based on equality of rights between the participating Lands. These reflected ideas drawn from leading political thinkers of the age. He believes the Confoederatio Bohemica represented an alternative model of a more effective central government, based on consent from below, to the monarchical-absolutist command model then coming into favour in Europe.     

When risk‐based regulation aims low: Approaches and challenges

Risk‐based regulation is becoming a familiar regulatory strategy in a wide range of areas and countries. Regulatory attention tends to focus, at least initially, on high risks but low‐risk regulatees or activities tend to form the bulk of the regulated population. This article asks why regulators need to address low risks and it outlines the potential difficulties that such risks present. It then considers how regulators tend to deal with lower risks in practice. A body of literature and survey‐based research is used to develop a taxonomy of intervention strategies that may be useful in relation to low‐risk activities, and, indeed, more widely. In an article to be published in the subsequent issue of this journal, we will then develop a strategic framework for regulators to employ when choosing intervention strategies and we will assesses whether, and how, such a framework could be used by regulatory agencies in a manner that is operable, dynamic, transparent, and justifiable.     

Paradoxes and Failures: ‘New Governance’ Techniques and the Financial Crisis

This article examines the performance of four ‘new governance’ techniques of regulation in the period leading up to the financial crisis: principles based regulation, risk based regulation, meta‐regulation and enrolment. These techniques have been advocated on the basis that they are responsive, flexible, and in enrolling others in the regulatory project thereby expand its capacity, and even its legitimacy. However, experience in the crisis revealed that in their implementation they can be out of touch or indulgent, focus heavily on auditable systems and processes, and that in enrolling others they can increase vulnerabilities and the potential for negative endogenous effects. The argument is not that there should be a return to adversarial ‘command and control’ regulation, rather that experience of these strategies in the crisis suggests a need to understand in greater depth the refractive effects of the organisational, technical/functional and cognitive dimensions of regulatory governance, if we are to understand and adapt its performance in different contexts.