Subterranean successes: Durable regulation and regulatory endowments

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Heimer, Carol A.; Kuo, Elsinore
• 署名单位: Northwestern University
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/rego.12426
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: S63-S82
• 关键词: drinking-water; self-regulation; capture; QUALITY; DESIGN

摘要

Scholars sometimes criticize durable regulatory systems for being costly, inefficient, ineffective, and inequitable. This article reassesses regulation, arguing that a mis-categorization of types of regulatory activity has led critics astray. More specifically, the article observes that regulation hardened by being built into infrastructure often ceases to be seen as regulation and its benefits are therefore inappropriately omitted from assessments of regulatory accomplishments. Hardening into one or another durable form can create two important benefits: durable regulation moves some items off the agenda of regulators, conserving resources for other regulatory work; durable regulation also creates regulatory endowments, preserving key bargains struck at the time infrastructure was created and reducing future opportunities for capture. Such endowments can then become the foundation for other regulatory work. Examples from the regulation of drinking water in the United States and brief discussions of road safety and disability regulation illustrate the argument.