Independent Regulatory Authorities: Contours of the Debate and Experience

Abstract

Taking note of the rapid growth of independent regulatory authorities and emerging evidence of significant variation in their design features as well as functional expression of independence across nations and within nations, sectors and levels of government, this article argues that regulatory discourses, including their institutional design and functionality, need to be understood in their specific political economy context and in the framework of larger goals of social justice and sustainable development, taking care of accountability, equity and environmental concerns that invite urgent attention. This would require a reopening of the debate on the parameters for evaluation of regulatory goals and design issues in the public domain involving all stakeholders. Rather than debating the extent of independence accomplished, one needs to consider the framework of regulation and the mechanisms which can address the challenge of competing rights claims in unequal power contexts.

Understanding regulatory cultures: The case of water regulatory reforms in India

“…The State seeks to achieve the effective functioning of competitive markets and where such markets are absent to mimic competitive market outcomes to the extent possible. (Government of India 2006, p. 2) Thus privatization accompanied regulation to ensure efficient pricing, signaling political credibility to investors and private actors, promoting competition, standardizing services, and protecting consumers (Dubash 2010;Arora 2018). The first phase of regulatory reforms focused on those sectors which were either the exclusive domain of the central government, such as telecoms, insurance, and capital market, or subjects shared under the Concurrent List, 7 such as electricity.…”

“…Correspondence: Shilpi Srivastava, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton BN19RE, UK. Email: s.srivastava2@ids.ac.uk There has been widespread sectoral diffusion of IRAs across the Indian institutional landscape in the last two decades (Arora 2018;Kapur & Khosla 2019) but this process has been far from uniform, especially across those sectors that categorically fall under the purview of the federal units (see Kumar 2020). For example, between 2005 and 2011, the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA)the focus of this articlehad generated euphoria and skepticism across the country.…”

Regulatory overlap: A systematic quantitative literature review

“…For instance, Tier 4 solution of “create new department”—which included the idea that new departments or new purposes needed to be designed in order to solve regulatory overlap—was featured six times in papers coded with the discipline of “environmental law” (see, e.g., Benson, 2012; King et al, 2013; Shih, 2020). Similarly, six papers addressing “resources, energy and water” proposed this solution (see, e.g., Arora, 2018; Carter et al, 2017; Junita, 2015). In the “resources” discipline there were also four papers that identified government centralization as a solution.…”

Diffusion agents and institutional change: The variable influence of independent regulatory agencies across sectors in India

“…The literature on diffusion of regulatory agencies in India suggests that as the Govt. of India turned towards multilateral institutions during the Balance of Payment (BOP) crisis in 1991, it led to India becoming a part of third wave to adopt the model of regulatory institutions (Arora 2018;Dubash and Morgan 2011;Dubash and Singh 2005). Dubash (2001Dubash ( , 2005Dubash ( , 2012 in his numerous works has extensively analyzed diffusion of regulatory agencies in India.…”