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Functional regulatory spaces

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Abstract

This article develops the concept of “Functional Regulatory Space” (FRS) in order to analyze the new forms of State action addressing (super) wicked problems. A FRS simultaneously spans several policy sectors, institutional territories and levels of government. It suggests integrating previous policy theories that focused on “boundary-spanning regime,” “territorial institutionalism” or multi-level governance. The FRS concept is envisaged as a Weberian “ideal-type” of State action and is applied to the empirical study of two European cases of potential FRS: the integrated management of water basins and the regulation of the European sky through functional airspace blocks. It will be concluded that the current airspace regulation does match the ideal-type of FRS any better than the water resource regulation does. The next research step consists in analyzing the genesis and institutionalization of potential FRS addressing other (super) wicked problems such as climate change and economic, security, health and immigration issues in different institutional contexts as well as at various levels of governance.

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Notes

  1. We would like to thank Peter J. May, Bernard Debarbieux, Géraldine Pflieger and the three anonymous reviewers for their fruitful comments on previous versions of this article.

  2. In this sense, an FRS could, to a certain extent, be compared to the concept of the "social field" developed by Bourdieu (1991) or to "configuration" proposed by Norbert Elias (Elias 1978).

  3. More precisely, there are various possible forms of geographical manifestation of an FRS: for example, surface (areolar) versus network (reticular); diffuse versus clearly bounded, etc. The shape depends on the stakeholders’ perception of the characteristics of the problem addressed. Some problems are characterised by quite clear geographical boundaries (e.g., integrated water basin management), while others are much more diffuse (e.g., food safety, technological risks).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, Unimail, 40 Boulevard du Pont d’Arve, 1211, Genève, Switzerland

    Frédéric Varone

  2. Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch, Case postale 4176, 1950, Sion 4, Switzerland

    Stéphane Nahrath

  3. Université catholique de Louvain, SPLE, Place Montesquieu 1, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    David Aubin

  4. Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Jean-David Gerber

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  1. Frédéric Varone
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Correspondence to Frédéric Varone.

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Varone, F., Nahrath, S., Aubin, D. et al. Functional regulatory spaces. Policy Sci 46, 311–333 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-013-9174-1

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