This memoir describes the 40‐year unfolding, project by project, of my sociolegal field research on legal and regulatory processes. It provides brief accounts of my interactions and interviews with regulatory officials and with businesspeople responsible for regulatory compliance. It also describes my ventures into the cross‐national comparison of legal and regulatory institutions and the political

Effective cyber incident response and crisis management increasingly relies on the coordination of relevant actors at supranational levels. A polycentric governance structure is one of the institutional arrangements that can promote active participation of involved actors, an aspect decisive for the rapid and effective response to cyber incidents and crises. This research aims to dissect whether, and

Large, listed companies are under increasing pressure to respond to critical issues such as climate change, modern slavery, and the protection of First Nations' heritage. Much of this pressure is exerted by civil society actors through corporate governance mechanisms, including leveraging shareholder rights to lobby firms. At the heart of this process sit largely understudied actors, proxy advisors

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In recent years, many countries have adopted biodiversity offset policies to internalize the ecological impacts of land developments. Although national policies share the general principle of equalizing ecological harm with gain, there is substantial variation across programs regarding the institutional forms governing offsetting. In this paper, we compare biodiversity governance in the United States

Scholarship on the administration of international organizations (IOs) has extensively discussed how autonomy influences their performance. While some argue that autonomy increases performance through greater adaptability, others warn that it may increase the risk of agency slack. Authors typically distinguish between three types of performance: output, outcome, and impact performance. We focus on

How can polycentric governance promote the development of ecosocial policies within existing policy systems? Through a study of green reforms of Danish vocational education, the paper argues that polycentric governance institutions are particularly useful at engaging constituent actors in innovation and constructive collaboration over reforming education programs to integrate ecological goals into

Trust is a key resource in financial transactions. Traditional financial institutions, and novel blockchain‐based decentralized financial (DeFi) services rely on fundamentally different sources of trust and confidence. The former relies on heavy regulation, trusted intermediaries, clear rules (and restrictions) on market competition, and long‐standing informal expectations on what banks and other financial

The governance turn in political research has led to increased attention to informal institutions. For scholars of international relations this has contributed to recent scholarship that reveals a notable growth in the number of informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs). Many aspects of IIGOs remain unknown, including whether they involve transnational actors (TNAs). Yet, whether IIGOs are open

How can decarbonization governance endure under increasing geoeconomic distress? Global tensions threaten to divert financial and political resources from the green transition toward national security issues. However, we lack the analytical tools to assess decarbonization governance in this age of global rivalries. To address this gap, we develop an analytical framework to study the effects of geoeconomic

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) adopted in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic marks an important departure in European Union (EU) governance, as it introduces an innovative “demand‐driven, performance‐based” model aimed at overcoming the limitations of past policies seeking to promote national reforms. In this study, we set out the theoretical assumptions underlying the RRF governance model

In large and complex human groups, social rules reduce individuals' uncertainty about their own choice set, including through these rules' simultaneous influence on the choice set of other individuals. But uncertainty varies as to the extent to which it is knowable and quantifiable ex ante. Therefore, different classes of social rules deal with the future uncertainty of individuals' conduct in structurally

As scholars race to address the climate crisis, they have often treated the problem as sui generis and have only rarely sought to learn from prior efforts to make industrial operations greener. In this paper, we consider what can be learned from other shifts away from polluting substances. Drawing on literatures on corporate regulatory strategies and evolving regulatory interactions, we argue for a

Scholars of the US regulatory process routinely assert that rulemaking is “ossified”—that it has become so encumbered with procedural constraints that it is difficult for agencies to issue socially desirable regulations. Yet, this claim has rarely been subject to empirical testing, and this is particularly true at the sub‐federal (i.e., US state) level. But the same factors that allegedly cause ossification

How do citizens perceive labor market risks related to digitalization and the green transition, and how do these risk perceptions translate into preferences for social policies? We address these questions in this paper by studying the policy preferences of individual workers on how governments should deal with the two labor market challenges of digitalization and the green transition. Employing novel

A regulatory sandbox is an emerging tool for addressing the challenges posed by the FinTech industry, but countries have embraced it to varying degrees. There is a need to systematically examine the question: Which factors explain the diverging trajectories in countries' decision to use (or not use) this instrument? This paper examines the adoption of regulatory sandboxes for FinTech in the Baltic

Since the 1990s, the EU has attempted to create a common electricity market. However, EU legislators are unsatisfied by the results. We argue that differentiated implementation of directives over time creates path dependencies that entrench national differences. The actor constellation of parties and incumbent operators at the beginning of the liberalization path determines how well countries implement

This article reviews recent insights from the blooming Comparative Political Economy (CPE) literature on climate change with the aim to demonstrate the importance of integrating climate change into the field of CPE and to highlight the contributions of CPE to our understanding of the social and political obstacles to effective climate policies. In addition, we advance two key points to bring the CPE

Citizen trust in regulatory agencies is essential for the functioning of society and markets. Trust in regulatory agencies promotes compliance and strengthens trust in regulated sectors. Despite its importance, there is no systematic study on how trust is in this context can be measured best. In response, this article presents findings of a systematic review of measures of trust in regulatory contexts

Political decisions over economic growth policies influence the degree of bureaucratic autonomy and regulatory governance dynamics. Yet, our understanding of these processes in the Global South is somewhat limited. The article studies the post‐Global Financial Crisis period and relies on elite interviews and secondary sources from Turkey. It problematizes how an economic growth model dependent on foreign

Decentralized governance technologies like blockchains are often proposed as substitutes for private legal arrangements like those provided by company law or organizational law more generally. In established legal systems in developed countries, the costs of implementing such algorithmic mechanisms are likely to be greater than the agency or other costs that come from selecting and trusting an existing

This contribution considers the revolution in the concept and practice of trust in corporate governance that first moved from trust in “people” to trust in “compliance,” setting the stage for the digitization of trust measures and the digitalization of compliance. Part One examines the fundamental challenge, one that arises from the near simultaneous shift in cultural expectations about trust from

Freedom of information (FOI) laws empower citizens to access public information from public organizations, enhancing government transparency and accountability. Previous studies have evaluated government transparency and FOI compliance based on the proactive release of information and governments' responses to citizens' requests. This study extends prior research by focusing on regulatory compliance

A considerable amount of work has focused on “regulatory innovation” in the social sciences. This scholarship has conceptually defined certain types of regulatory changes as innovations and explored how regulation, as a policy instrument, alters the pace of technological innovation. More recently, a renewed interest for policy mixes and more dynamism in industrial innovation policies around the world

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A wealth of studies has discussed the impact of different regulatory regimes on firms, but have ignored the differences in citizens' attitudes toward firms in different regulatory regimes. Exploring these attitudes is crucial to understanding the micro‐effects of regulatory regimes and market developments. This study aims to investigates the impact of regulatory regimes on citizens' trust in regulated

Policy growth comes with multiple challenges for policy implementation. Congested policy portfolios increase the likelihood of interactions and contradictions between different policy objectives and instruments. Moreover, policy growth can lead to difficulties during implementation when many public and private organizations must cooperate and manage increasing complexity and overlapping responsibilities

The unsettling conditions of contemporary society, marked by recurrent transboundary crises and turbulence, stimulate discussions about the resilience of different governing models. Public bureaucracy and its governing instruments are confronted with the virtues and vices of models dominated by markets and networks. We present a case study demonstrating how the governing instruments within a system

Interfirm self‐regulation through trade associations is common but its effectiveness is debated and likely varies by time, country, and industry. This study examines self‐regulation of pharmaceutical marketing, characterized by delegation of major regulatory responsibilities to trade associations' self‐regulatory bodies. In addressing critical research gaps, this study first analyzes 1,776 complaints

Worker cooperatives in the gig economy can involve large and heterogeneous memberships, which makes them vulnerable to member opportunism depleting collective resources. External shocks may present another challenge for collective resource management. This raises the question of how heterogeneous cooperatives design rules to mitigate opportunistic behavior and whether these rules evolve in the face

Ineffective policies plague democratic systems and challenge their legitimacy. While existing research highlights the importance of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) as de facto “policymakers,” our understanding of SLBs' aggregate effects on policy outcomes remains limited. Therefore, this paper proposes a shift in perspective, redirecting attention from the micro level toward institutional structures

This article reports findings of a Q Methodology study in which we explored the opinions of employees from eight Dutch regulatory agencies on how agencies gain their reputation. This is the largest study to date examining employee's views on the relative importance of different factors in reputation acquisition by public organizations, and the first analyzing employees in regulatory agencies. Results

Bureaucratic overburdening has emerged as an important theme in public policy and administration research. The concept signifies a state where public administrators are overwhelmed with more tasks and responsibilities than they can effectively handle. Researchers attribute this phenomenon to several key factors, such as an increasing assault on the public sector, a growing volume of policies to enforce

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

Cooperative forms of policy implementation bear the promise of being an answer to the policy delivery challenge resulting from policy growth, with the quality of network management often rated as a key success factor. The positive relationship between network management and performance in networks, however, is primarily supported by theoretical reasoning rather than empirical evidence. The present

The governing attributes of authority, legitimacy, and accountability are essential to any type of governance to be able to function effectively. For public forms of governing, the attributes are part of the structures and institutions of democratic states, for example, through the tripartition of power, voting, and legal structures. For private forms of governance, such as multi‐stakeholder initiatives

Making security has been Leviathan's home turf and its prime responsibility. Yet, while security states in advanced democracies share this uniform purpose, there is vast variation in how they legitimize and how they make security policies. First, the political authority of elected policy‐makers is sometimes superseded by the epistemic authority of experts. Second, states make security, in some instances

How does regulatory statehood develop from the regulatory work which governments have always done? This article challenges conventional views that regulatory statehood is achieved by transition to arm's length agencies and that it replaces court-based enforcement or displaces legislatures in favor of less accountable executive power. To do so, we examine the major 19th-century surge in development

As a result of policy growth, implementing agencies often face new mandates without the necessary capacity expansion to comply with, thus resorting to intermediaries. However, intermediaries are not innocuous to the implementation process, especially when they are expected to play the double role of target and intermediary, responsible for translating/interpreting regulation for beneficiaries. How

How data on individuals are gathered, analyzed, and stored remains largely ungoverned at both domestic and global levels. We address the unique governance problem posed by digital data to provide a framework for understanding why data governance remains elusive. Data are easily transferable and replicable, making them a useful tool. But this characteristic creates massive governance problems for all

Regulators are increasingly concerned about deceptive, online choice architecture, including dark patterns and behavioral sludge. From a behavioral science perspective, fostering a regulatory environment which reduces the economic harm caused by deceptive designs, while safeguarding the benefits of well-meaning behavioral insights, is essential. This article argues for a principles-based approach and

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The literature on responsive regulation argues that citizens should be involved in regulatory practices to avoid capture between regulator and regulatee. It also argues that including citizens can add an important perspective to regulatory practices. However, we know little about how citizens' perspectives are brought into regulatory practices. This paper draws on existing qualitative research to compare

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Regulatory intermediaries—organizations that operate between regulators (public and private) and target groups—perform a range of important functions. While most previous research has focused on intermediaries that have been delegated official authority, in this paper we focus on unofficial and informal intermediary functions aiming to advance the governance of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

European administrative networks (EANs) are an increasingly prominent form of European Union (EU) governance. Although these networks are typically portrayed as important and flexible forms of organization, we lack knowledge of their temporal dimension, including their development in times of crisis. This paper provides a first analysis of network interaction as it unfolds before and during times of

Bureaucratic rulemaking is a key feature of American policymaking. However, rulemaking activities do not occur uniformly, but fluctuate throughout the year. We consider three mechanisms to explain these changes in rule volume, each of which produces unique expectations for rulemaking during periods of divided government and legislative recess. To test these expectations, we leverage an original dataset

Rules lie at the core of many disciplines beneath regulatory studies. Such a broad interest inevitably comes with fragmented understandings and technical choices that hinder knowledge cumulation and learning. This introduction tackles these limitations through an encompassing analytical blueprint from measurement theory. First, it addresses ambiguities to establish formal rules as a distinct research

This article analyzes the public comments submitted to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), 2010–2014, in response to proposed rules for implementing the Dodd-Frank reforms. By addressing a fine-grained typology of commenting organizations to a topic model of the combined comments, we illuminate a new pattern of public engagement in financial regulation. Contrary to the economic concept

Research on policy implementation traditionally has focused on understanding the success or failure of individual policies within specific contexts. Little attention has been given to the challenges that emerge from the cumulative growth of policy portfolios over time. This paper is addressing this research gap by examining the phenomenon of organizational policy triage, which occurs when implementation

This study examines the relationship between the complexity of EU directives and their successful implementation at the national level. Moving beyond the state-of-the-art, we propose a comprehensive framework considering structural, linguistic, and relational dimensions of policy complexity. We argue that policy complexity entails higher transaction costs, hindering effective implementation. Using

Many studies show that supranational governance structures (SGS)—understood as international organizations or international treaties—contribute to the global diffusion of public policies. However, we still have a limited understanding of which properties of SGS hasten the number of policy adoptions. To advance this literature, we argue that SGS making legally binding and univocal claims are more likely

Building on the concept of participatory regulation, this study emphasizes recognizing the multidimensional character of citizens' risk regulation preferences. Using the case of autonomous vehicles, we specify six technology-related risks: product safety, regulatory oversight, legal liability, ethical prioritization, data protection, and human supervision. We argue that differences in these multidimensional

The International Atomic Energy Agency asserts that the regulation of the safety of civil nuclear power requires national regulatory agencies to be effectively independent. However, in the early years of national civil nuclear power programs national nuclear industries were dominated by iron triangles or subgovernments of powerful actors with an interest in promoting the industry. The creation of an

In the early 2000s, Latin America witnessed a resurgence in debates concerning the state's economic role, coinciding with a political transformation as new parties emerged to power. Existing literature on the “return of Industrial Policy” in the region largely offers a descriptive perspective, bypassing the intricacies of policy typifications and their associated political foundations. This paper addresses

Existing research investigating regulatory agencies' reputation-conscious behavior have primarily focused on reactive behavior in the context of reputational threats. Additionally, this literature has primarily focused on agencies' responses to such threats and external audiences' perceptions of agencies reputation, although reputation resides in both external and internal audiences. This study aims

The institutional design of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) has been recognized as an important determinant of compliance with VSS rules, which partly explains heterogeneity in VSS sustainability impacts. However, the current understanding of how VSS institutional design generates compliance is scattered and lacks systematic operationalization. This paper brings together different strands

Populist, illiberal, or outright autocratic movements threaten democracies worldwide, particularly when such extreme political forces gain control of executive power. For public administration illiberal backsliders in government pose a dilemma. Trained on instrumental values and expected to implement neutrally the political choices of their elected superiors, bureaucrats lack orientation of how to

The European Commission has pioneered the coercive regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), including a proposal of banning some applications altogether on moral grounds. Core to its regulatory strategy is a nominally “risk-based” approach with interventions that are proportionate to risk levels. Yet, neither standard accounts of risk-based regulation as rational problem-solving endeavor nor theories