Rethinking Regulation
Edward Balleisen, Director
Now three years old, Rethinking Regulation at the Kenan Institute for Ethics has built a solid foundation for interdisciplinary research, teaching, and outreach within the broad terrain of regulatory governance. We now have over twenty-five faculty and more than ten graduate and professional students who are part of the network, mostly from Duke, but also from NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill. The program has served as a launching pad for one major research project that is well underway; an ambitious new interdisciplinary undergraduate lecture course; a new means of connecting graduate students across the boundaries of disciplines and professional schools; and a new channel for linking Duke scholars to policy-makers. We have also created a faculty governance structure, with Jonathan Wiener, Tim Büthe, and Lori Bennear joining Ed Balleisen on a strategic planning group.
Four Main Areas of Strategic Focus:
The Rethinking Regulation program will have four overlapping areas of focus in 2012-2013: 1) the Relationship between Crisis and Risk Regulation; 2) Adaptive Regulation (especially in the context of rapidly changing technological or market conditions); 3) New Directions for Competition Policy 4) Mapping Regulatory Strategies in Emerging Economies.
1) Crisis and Risk Regulation: Several members of the Rethinking Regulation group share an interest in how crises reshape risk perceptions, both among the general public and policy-making elites; and how regulators respond to such events. We have embarked on a major collaborative study of these issues, “Recalibrating Risk: Crises, Perceptions, and Regulatory Responses,” led by Edward Balleisen, Jonathan Wiener, Kim Krawiec, and Lori Bennear (more below). We’ve received a major grant with the Smith Richardson Foundation to support this work.
2) Adaptive Regulation: Partnering with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, we are in the early stages of a project that will explore how regulatory authorities cope with extremely rapid change, either in technology or economic conditions. Policymakers sometimes face pressures to regulate before they have perfect knowledge about science, the risks associated with new technologies, or both. Alternatively, regulatory policies that make sense at one time may be overtaken by new practices or technologies that render existing regulations inadequate for addressing harm or realizing benefits. This project brings together faculty from across the university to consider: general processes of organizational learning; strategies of institutional design to encourage a culture of experimentation and assessment of regulatory results; and specific case studies of regulatory attempts to cope with rapid advances in scientific understanding and/or advances in technologies. Contexts of environmental regulation loom large in this project.
3) New Directions for Competition Policy: Many economic sectors have experienced growing concentrations of economic power in recent decades, including agriculture, healthcare, media, and perhaps most importantly, finance. These developments have raised questions about the appropriate approaches to regulating monopoly, oligopoly, and competition. Should competition policy reflect more than just a concern for consumer welfare, defined by consumer prices? If so, should regulators value greater diffusion of economic power on social/democratic grounds? Should they take account of the contribution that diversification of economic forms can make to the robustness of economic systems? And should they also worry about the capacity of corporate behemoths to exercise undue influence over the political process? These are some of the questions that we would like to explore over the next few years, lead by Tim Buthe.
4) Regulatory Strategies in Emerging Economies. During the last fifteen years, emerging economies across the globe have begun to create modern regulatory institutions. Privatization has led many countries to try to regulate newly created firms that have taken advantage of their market dominance. Growing prosperity has at once heightened popular demands to curb negative externalities such as pollution or risks in the workplace, and improved government capacity. At the same time, a host of global NGOs have become interested in strategies for regulating global supply chains, especially around environmental and labor issues. We are interested in mapping the resulting regulatory initiatives in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America, paying close attention to patterns of policy diffusion (whether from the US and the EU to emerging economies; between emerging economies; or from the “periphery” to the “core”) and the ways that globalization shapes those patterns.
History 365 – The Modern Regulatory State
This spring, Edward Balleisen taught a new course, with the assistance of a PUTTI course development grant from the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. Many members of the Rethinking Regulation seminar participated in class sessions, as well as several regulatory officials. Thirty-two undergraduate students enrolled in the class, which was cross listed in history, public policy, the Nicholas School, and political science. Three graduate students (from history, law, and public administration at NC State) took an independent study connected to the course.