Regulatory state

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The term regulatory state refers to the expansion in the use of rule making, monitoring and enforcement techniques and institutions by the state and to a parallel change in the way its positive functions in society are being carried out. [1] The expansion of the state nowadays is generally via regulation and less via taxing and spending. [2] The notion of the regulatory state is increasingly more attractive for theoreticians of the state with the growth in the use and application of rule making, monitoring and enforcement strategies and with the parallel growth of civil regulation and business regulation. The rise of the regulatory state in the Industrial Revolution can be traced to network regulation first instituted by William Gladstone in 1844. [3] The co-expansion of state, civil and business regulation at the domestic and the transnational arenas suggests that the notions of regulatory governance and regulatory capitalism are as usefully theoretically as the notion of regulatory state. Term coined during Progressive era. Some speculate that a quasi-anarcho-regulatory-capitalism will replace some liberal democracies. [4]

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Cary Coglianese

Cary Coglianese is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he is also director of the Penn Program on Regulation.

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References

  1. Levi-Faur, David, "The Odyssey of the Regulatory State – Episode One: The Rescue of the Welfare State", Jerusalem Papers in Regulation & Governance, Paper No. 39, November 2011.
  2. Giandomenico Majone (1997). From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance. Journal of Public Policy, 17, pp 139-167 doi:10.1017/S0143814X00003524
  3. Ian McLean (2004). The history of regulation in the United Kingdom: three case studies in search of a theory, in J. Jordana and D. Levi-Faur eds, The Politics of Regulation: institutions and regulatory reforms for the age of governance (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2004), pp. 45-66. ISBN   1 84376 464 4
  4. anarcho-capitalism