Graduate Research Award: Regulatory Governance
Application due date: November 15^th, 2013
Award notification: December 15^th,  2013

Rethinking Regulation at the Kenan Institute for Ethics invites graduate and professional students to apply for small research grants to fund the costs of research related to the analysis of regulatory governance, either for a pilot study that might turn into an eventual dissertation topic, or for an already formulated dissertation project. The Institute will furnish up to $2,000 per award, which must be used for research expenses (travel, purchase of research materials, etc.). We anticipate making three awards.

All proposals related to the broad domain of regulatory governance will be considered. Our priority areas include:
1)  Crisis and Risk Regulation:  How crises reshape risk perceptions, both among the general public and policy-making elites; and how regulators respond to such events?
2)  Adaptive Regulation:  How regulatory authorities cope with extremely rapid change, either in technology or economic conditions?
3)  New Directions for Competition Policy:  What are the appropriate approaches to regulating monopoly, oligopoly, and competition?
4)  Regulatory Strategies in Emerging Economies.  What are the 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 is shaping those patterns?

Application Requirements:

• Applicants must be enrolled in a Duke graduate or professional program for the Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters.
• Applicants must submit the following to Jenny Cook at jennifer.cook@duke.edu:
  • Brief research proposal describing the research project, its connection to the study of regulatory governance, the amount of funding requested, and the specific ways in which the funds will be used. This statement should not exceed three (3) pages.
  • Two letters of recommendation, one of which is provided by the student’s faculty advisor or mentor for the project.
  • Copy of current Duke Transcript.
  • Curriculum Vitae, including a list of previous grants and awards.

Interdisciplinary Research Workshop
Recipients of Research Awards will be expected to present a paper or dissertation chapter draft based on the supported research to a graduate student workshop held by the Rethinking Regulation working group.

Rethinking Regulation Events
Recipients will be strongly encouraged to participate in Rethinking Regulation events, including a monthly interdisciplinary Faculty-Graduate Student Seminar and public events.

 The Tobin Project, a main supporter of the Rethinking Regulation project, has been awarded a “Creative and Effective Institutions” Award from the MacArthur Foundation.  The Tobin Project has created several networks of leading social scientists who share interests around big public policy questions including regulatory policy.

Tobin Founder and President David Moss invited Ed Balleisen to join the effort to get Tobin off the ground in 2005.  Since then Ed has helped to forge a strategic direction for Tobin, consulting on research priorities and organizational focus.  From 2007-2009, he spearheaded, along with Moss, a major research project on regulatory governance, which culminated in the 2009 publication of “Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation” (Cambridge University Press).  Ed is featured in a short video announcing the award which can be found here:   www.macfound.org/maceirecipients/71/

Congratulations to the Tobin Project!

Additional work has been posted as part of the ongoing Faculty Working Papers series resulting from the regular meetings of the Rethinking Regulation faculty working group, which workshops papers from a variety of perspectives on regulatory issues.

Congratulations to Tim Büthe, whose book (co-written with Walter Mattli), The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy (Princeton, 2011),  won the 2012 Best Book Award of the International Studies Association.

In their book, Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli examine three powerful global private regulators: the International Accounting Standards Board, which develops financial reporting rules used by corporations in more than a hundred countries; and the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, which account for 85 percent of all international product standards. Over the past two decades, governments have delegated extensive regulatory authority to international private-sector organizations. This internationalization and privatization of rule making has been motivated not only by the economic benefits of common rules for global markets, but also by the realization that government regulators often lack the expertise and resources to deal with increasingly complex and urgent regulatory tasks. The New Global Rulers examines who writes the rules in international private organizations, as well as who wins, who loses–and why.