The boundary conditions for regulation: Welfare systems, state traditions, and the varied governance of work safety in Europe

Abstract

Studies of the relationship between the welfare and regulatory state have hitherto either focused on the latter displacing the former, or presented regulation as an alternative means for achieving welfare goals. Little is known, however, about their varied mutual interactions. This article addresses that gap by examining the coevolution of workers' compensation and occupational safety regulation in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Drawing on an extensive international analysis of primary documents, secondary literature, and interviews with regulator, insurance, business, and labor representatives, the article identifies strikingly varied but stable national preferences for: (a) the use of financial versus regulatory instruments and (b) the allocation of regulatory responsibilities between state and nonstate actors. The article presents a novel explanation of that variation as dependent on the relative coherence of interactions between the particular cost‐control logics of welfare provision and wider norms and traditions of state action in each country.

Modes of regulatory governance: A political economy perspective

“…Methodologically speaking, two articles use a quantitative (Kudrna, ; Wassum & De Francesco, ) and four espouse a mostly qualitative approach (Mizrachy‐Borchovitz & Levi‐Faur, ; Bulfone, ; Coroado, ; Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ). All contributions employ the comparative method.…”

“…All contributions employ the comparative method. More specifically, Bulfone () and Wassum and De Francesco () compare across different countries and sectors; Mizrachy‐Borchovitz and Levi‐Faur (), Kudrna () and Rothstein, Paul and Demeritt () analyze the same regulatory sector in different countries; Coroado () performs a diachronic analysis of several sector regulators in the same country. In terms of geographical variation, European countries are predominant in our sample: only Mizrachy‐Borchovitz and Levi‐Faur () go beyond by including the United States and Israel.…”

“…Considering sectors, the special issue covers not only domains that have been traditionally analyzed in regulatory studies, such as network industries (see Bulfone, ; Wassum & De Francesco, ), but also fields that have received less attention, for example, occupational health and safety (Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ), and regulatory sectors characterized by recent developments like banking regulation (Kudrna, ) and credit consumer data protection (Mizrachy‐Borchovitz & Levi‐Faur, ).…”

“…Most articles seek to explain how institutions and actors (inputs) influence outputs, which we have distinguished between rules that allow or forbid specific behaviors (prescriptive outputs) and rules that create enforcers like regulatory agencies and endow them with powers and competences (organizational outputs). Four articles (Mizrachy‐Borchovitz & Levi‐Faur, ; Bulfone, ; Kudrna, ; Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ) look at prescriptive outputs, while two (Coroado, ; Wassum & Di Francesco, ) focus on organizational outputs, and on the independence and autonomy of regulatory agencies in particular. The relationship between outputs and outcomes, which we found to be rare in regulatory studies in general, is explored by the two contributions (Bulfone, ; Rothstein, Paul, & Demeritt, ) that adopt a more historical‐institutionalist approach.…”

“…Bulfone also highlights the importance of feedback loops, observing that the Italian failure in the telecommunication sector led the government to adopt a different strategy, and ultimately succeed, in the energy sector. Rothstein, Paul and Demeritt () adopt a similar approach in their cross‐time and cross‐country comparison of occupational health and safety regulations in four countries (Germany, France, United Kingdom, and The Netherlands). What they find is that regulatory regimes are shaped both by welfare state traditions and by the degree of state interventionism.…”