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This study aims to improve theoretical accounts of regulatory responses to emerging technologies by proposing a model of regulatory development, which incorporates a role for types of uncertainty and for existing regulatory institutions. Differently from existing theories of regulatory development, the model proposed here posits a sequence of cyclical activities where regulatory responses arise in incremental fashion out of efforts to make sense of emerging technologies and to ponder the applicability of existing regulatory tools. The model is discussed on the basis of the comparison between regulatory responses to the emergence of CRISPR gene editing in the US and the EU in the period 2012-2019. The comparison between the two cases suggests how regulatory responses to emerging technologies are affected by expectations of future technological and regulatory developments and by existing regulatory institutions.

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In 1994, the Italian Parliament passed a reform which aimed to radically change the economic regulatory institutions of the water sector in the country. The implementation of the reform, which lasted about twelve years, resulted in a new regulatory regime which combined selected features of public ownership, franchise allocation, and discretionary regulation. The reform was implemented in different ways across the country, resulting in different forms of organisation and management of water services at the local level. Drawing from this case, this paper aims to discuss two issues, namely why water regulatory reforms are designed as 'hybrids' between different regulatory 'models', and why, within a given regulatory institutional framework, water regulatory reforms may be implemented in different ways at the local level. This paper, therefore, aims to contribute to a broader scholarly discussion regarding the rationales for institutional variety of water infrastructure regulation at the national and sub-national levels, and regarding the practical implications for managing the implementation of water regulatory reforms.

Within the area of study of privatization, some attention has been placed on the emergence of mixed public‐private ownership firms for the provision of public services. Mixed ownership firms pose an important theoretical issue, i.e., why do governments open up part of their ownership of public service providers to private operators and investors rather than giving up full ownership of public service providers or establishing a contractual relationship with the private partner? This paper aims to address this issue by analyzing the case of the emergence of mixed ownership firms for the provision of water services in Italy. The analysis of the case shows that partial privatization of public service providers is especially related to characteristics of the historical and institutional context as well as to features of the privatization policy process.

In an effort to reconfigure the system for the delivery of agricultural services, the Regional Government of Sardinia in Italy decided, in 2006, to suppress five public entities, and to establish three regional agencies in their place. Based on inter- views conducted with managers and staff within these agencies, this article narrates the episode of implementing the organizational restructuring of this part of the regional government’s agricultural policy. Drawing on this case, this article then presents an explanation of the process of carrying out organizational transformations (namely, mergers and demergers) within sub-national governments’ administrative systems. The study finds that policy process features and context conditions figure prominently as explanatory factors for the path and outcome of the implementation of the organiza- tional restructuring. On the whole, the research argument made in this article suggests some qualifications of existing generalizing arguments about the management of organizational transformations in the public sector

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