Bettina Lange

Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s systemic-theoretical reasoning for conducting empirical research about legal regulation presents two distinct challenges. First, the high level of abstraction of systems theory requires the development of research techniques that enable empirical data to be brought into dialogue with systemic-theoretical concepts. Second, Luhmann did not much discuss the role of ‘interests’ in coordinating social action, but political and economic interests are considered – particularly in public and private interest theories of regulation – as key drivers of the design and implementation of regulatory regimes. Considering these two challenges, this chapter provides a conceptual apparatus and examples of how to conceive and study the role of interests in legal, including environmental regulation.

This article starts from the assumption that economic sociology, including Karl Polanyi’s work, can contribute fresh perspectives to regulation debates because it opens up new understandings of the nature of economic activity, a key target of legal regulation. In particular this article examines Polanyi’s idea that society drives regulation. For Polanyi the “regulatory counter-movement” is society’s response to the disembedding – in particular through the proliferation of markets – of economic out of social relationships. Section One of the article identifies three key challenges that arise from this Polanyian take on regulation for contemporary regulation researchers. First, Polanyi focuses on social norms restraining business behavior, but neglects social norms embedded in law as also shaping regulation. Second, he seems to imply a clear-cut conceptual distinction between “economy” and “society.” Third, his analysis sidelines the role of interest politics in the development of regulation. Addressing the first of these three key challenges, Section Two of this article therefore argues that a Polanyian vision of “socialized” legal regulation should build on contemporary accounts of responsive law and regulation, which focus attention on social norms informing legal regulation. Section Three of this article tackles the second key challenge raised by Polanyi’s work for contemporary regulation researchers, that is, how to transcend a modernist perspective of “economy” and “society” as clearly demarcated, distinct fields of social action. It argues that discourse theory is an important alternative theoretical resource. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe, the article suggests that understanding “economy” and “society” as performed by open and relationally constructed discourses helps to capture interconnections between “economy” and “society” that become particularly visible when we analyze how specific regulatory regimes work at a medium- and small-scale level. These points are further brought to life in Section Four through a discussion of the European Union (EU) regulatory regime for trade in risky, transgenic agricultural products, and in particular the current reform debates about the consideration of the “socioeconomic impacts” of such products

This article presents an innovative framework for analysing environmental governance challenges by focusing on their Drivers, Responses and Impacts (DRI). It builds on and modifies the widely applied Drivers, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses (DPSIR) model. It suggests, firstly and most importantly, that the various temporal and spatial scales at which Drivers, Responses and Impacts operate should be included in the DRI conceptual framework. Secondly, the framework focuses on Drivers, Impacts and Responses in order to provide a parsimonious account of a drought system that can be informed by a range of social science, humanities and science data. ‘Pressures’ are therefore considered as a sub-category of ‘Drivers’. ‘States’ are a sub-category of ‘Impacts’. Thirdly, and most fundamentally in order to facilitate cross-disciplinary research of droughts, the DRI framework defines each of its elements, ‘Drivers’, ‘Pressures’, ‘States’, ‘Impacts’ and ‘Responses’ as capable of being shaped by both linked natural and social factors. This is different from existing DPSIR models which often see ‘Responses’ and ‘Impacts’ as located mainly in the social world, while ‘States’ are considered to be states within the natural environment only. The article illustrates this argument through an application of the DRI framework to the 1976 and 2003–6 droughts. The article also starts to address how - in cross-disciplinary research that encompasses physical and social sciences – claims about relationships between Drivers as well as Impacts of and Responses to drought over time can be methodologically justified. While the DRI framework has been inductively developed out of research on droughts we argue that it can be applied to a range of environmental governance challenges

This article examines the reception of the education Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in the UK as an aspect of Europeanization of national administrations. It addresses relationships between political and administrative actors in the process of responding to the education OMC. We argue that despite progress with institutionalization of the education OMC at the EU level, there is limited institutionalization of the education OMC at the national level. Against the backdrop of UK skepticism about engaging with the EU integration project, the interesting finding is the administrative strategies employed for deflecting EU influence on the national education space.

This article examines the relationships between governance structures and regulatory approaches. It develops a typology to explain and fine-tune supranational regulatory models for the governance of markets. The article suggests, firstly, a range of regulatory options which are defined according to two dimensions: (a) the degree of centralization of regulation, which includes networks, meta-organisations, and single central authorities; and (b) the degree of invasiveness of regulation, which ranges from sunshine regulation to command and control approaches. The aim is to relate structural alternatives (considered in terms of centralization) to regulatory approaches (considered in terms of invasiveness). The typology here constructed is applied to analyse the governance structure of EU competition law. Secondly, the article focuses on the recent structural changes reshaping the governance of European financial markets. The reform is discussed through the lens of the typology. It appears that, differently from what was observed in the EU competition law model, the newly established European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) are part of a complex structural development, in which the separation between a highly invasive regulatory approach and a decentralised supervisory structure adds further complexity. The article concludes by noting a set of possible normative implications, suggested by the typology, to ensure a consistent governance model for financial markets regulation and supervision in the EU.