Suchergebnisse

For decades, independent regulatory agencies were considered undemocratic because of their independence from political control. However, regulatory agencies are increasingly developing practices and organisational designs that reflect the sharing of power with external actors, thereby enhancing their democratic qualities. While scholars have studied these qualities, namely transparency, participation, representation and accountability, a comprehensive measure by which these qualities can be measured and compared has not yet been developed. This article fills that gap by developing indicators to measure mandatory and voluntary democratic qualities following a qualitative analysis of six regulatory agencies. It contributes to the study of regulation and public administration more broadly by advancing a research agenda that illuminates the role of bureaucracies in promoting pluralistic or majoritarian democratic values.

Uncertainty in election outcomes generates politically induced regulatory risk. For monopoly regulation, political parties\' risk attitudes towards such risk depend on a fluctuation effect that hurts both parties and an output--expansion effect that benefits at least one party. Irrespective of the parties\' risk attitudes, political parties have incentives to negotiate away regulatory risk by pre-electoral bargaining. Pareto-efficient bargaining outcomes fully eliminate regulatory risk and are attainable through institutionalizing independent regulatory agencies with a specific objective. Key aspects of the regulatory overhaul of the US Postal system in 1970 are argued to be consistent with these results.

Independent regulatory agencies( IRAs) in a democratic system of government are designed to ensure and promote their independence and autonomous functioning. It is rooted in the concept of regulatory state. Developing countries like India stepped into this direction in the 1990s. In this article, an attempt has been made to analyse the working of IRAs with special reference to the electricity sector. The article demonstrates how the rollout of the agencies brought into light the difficulties of achieving functional independence and operational effectiveness. The discretionary authority is limited from within and without although the institutional space for regulatory policy is slowly but certainly becoming more open. The study seeks to identify some of the weaknesses of this new institutional arrangement that have become evident over the last few years.