The Independence of Regulatory Authorities

Abstract

This chapter offers a theoretical and empirical assessment of the distinctive feature of regulatory agencies, namely their independence. First, we discuss the formal and informal aspects of regulatory independence, their conceptualization, and their operationalization. Second, we present empirical research explaining the variation of formal independence across countries and sectors. We also point out that formal independence is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for regulators' de facto independence from political decision-makers and from the regulated industries. We conclude by highlighting the persistent relevance of regulatory independence for the study of the ongoing processes of re-regulation and agencification. * To be published in Levi-Faur, David (ed.) (2010), Handbook of Regulation, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. We are grateful to David Levi-Faur for helpful comments.

Minding Weber More Than Ever? The Impacts of State Capacity and Bureaucratic Autonomy on Development Goals

“…Comprehensive, objective and sensible ways to measure bureaucratic features exist, but unfortunately data are cross-sectional and comprising only 16 European countries (Gilardi and Maggetti 2010;Hanretty and Koop 2009). Additionally, the concept of bureaucratic autonomy entails a level of complexity that has made it difficult to find consensus regarding its operationalization (Christensen 2010).…”

Las agencias públicas en España: tensiones entre autonomía y rendición de cuentas

“…La autonomía de una agencia puede ser promovida por determinadas características de su diseño institucional, llegando incluso al caso de las agencias independientes, que tienen establecidos mecanismos de delegación que protegen a sus responsables en la toma de decisiones, frenando la posible influencia de los cargos políticos (Gilardi y Maggetti, 2011;Jordana et al, 2011). Así, por ejemplo, una variable que considerar en su diseño institucional la constituyen los sistemas de provisión de los puestos de dirección y el perfil profesional de sus cargos.…”

Does regulatory independence translate into a higher degree of liberalization? - Evidence from EU energy regulators

“…An authority's formal independence determines the degree of autonomy conceded to an IRA by statutes and laws that prohibit political interventions (Gilardi, 2002). It has to be distinguished from an agency's de facto independence (Gilardi and Maggetti, 2011) which captures the non-interference in an authority's day-to-day operations and is conceptualized and operationalized in Maggetti (2007). Unlike the formal independence concept, the de facto approach considers autonomy from both politicians and regulatees.…”

“…They rather emphasize the relevance of the warning to be found repeatedly in research on IRAs (Thatcher, 2002a;Maggetti, 2007;Gilardi and Maggetti, 2011): despite the substantial role that regulatory authorities (are supposed to) play during reform processes, a comprehensive analysis of their functioning and particularly their actual impact on liberalization is still missing.…”

“…At the same time, this study takes the first steps to overcome an issue identified as significantly impeding the empirical assessment of IRAs: the problem of lacking long-term data on the agencies' degree of statutory autonomy (Gilardi and Maggetti, 2011) is tackled by the construction of a small panel sample that captures the formal independence of the same European energy 1 Methods and data sources used to construct both the independence and the liberalization index are described in detail in Section 2.1. regulators in different years.…”