Abstract
Transnational regulatory networks play important roles in multi-level regulatory regimes, as e.g, the European Union. In this paper we analyze the role of regulatory networks from the perspective of the economic theory of legal federalism. Often sophisticated intermediate institutional solutions between pure centralisation and pure decentralisation can help to solve complex tradeoff problems between the benefits and problems of centralised and decentralised solutions. Drawing upon the insights of the political science literature about regulatory networks, we show that regulatory networks might be an institutional innovation that can fulfill a number of functions (rule-making, best practices and policy learning, effective enforcement, conflict resolution) that might allow for a better intermediate solution between centralised and decentralised regulatory powers. We apply our approach in three case studies to very different regulatory networks, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communication (BEREC), the European Competition Network (ECN), and the International Competition Network (ICN). An important result is that regulatory networks might not only be a temporary phenomenon but part of long-term institutional solutions in European multi-level regulatory regimes.
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Notes
- 1.
Not included are regulatory networks, which also encompass private organisations as firms or NGOs (e.g., as part of private regulation).
- 2.
- 3.
This is also connected to the view that European regulatory networks are in an area of conflict through a double delegation problem (principal agent theory), resulting from delegating authority from the national level to (1) the EU Commission, and (2) to independent national regulatory agencies (Coen and Thatcher 2008, 51–54).
- 4.
Some political authors present regulatory networks also as a panacea, see e.g., Slaughter (2005).
- 5.
See for the relevant economic criteria and the analysis of regulatory competition, e.g., Sun and Pelkmans (1995), Garcimartín (1999), Van den Bergh (2000), Heine and Kerber (2002), Pelkmans (2006, 36–52), Van den Bergh and Camesasca (2006, 406–417), Kerber (2008), and the contributions in Esty and Geradin (2001) and Marciano and Josselin (2002, 2003). For the links to the subsidiarity principle see Kirchner (1997) and Backhaus (1998).
- 6.
For laboratory federalism see Oates (1999, 1131–1134); in regard to the interpretation of regulatory competition as an Hayekian evolutionary process of innovation and imitation and linking it to the political science literature on policy innovation and policy learning (e.g., Dolowitz and Marsh 2000), see Kerber and Eckardt (2007, with many references). This evolutionary perspective is close to the small literature in political science about “experimentalist governance” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008).
- 7.
Not included are documents, which concern primarily internal organisation issues of the network.
- 8.
BEREC also provided three opinions on earlier versions of the Recommendation (BoR (11) 43, 6).
- 9.
Article 21 FD stipulates that “the competent national regulatory authorities shall coordinate their efforts and shall have the right to consult BEREC in order to bring about a consistent resolution of the dispute”.
- 10.
Document BoR (13) 34 describes a case, where a Belgian company faces a cross-border impediment, which makes a cross-national regulatory action necessary. Ultimately the Dutch regulator (as one of the concerned national regulators) took action and asked BEREC for technical support.
- 11.
In regard to this proposal and its critique by BEREC, see document BoR (13) 142, 4, and Kerber and Wendel (2014, 190) supporting the rejection of this proposal of the Commission.
- 12.
The national competition laws as far as they are not fully harmonised can play only a role in small niches of competition law (with the exception of merger policy where the member states still have some scope for smaller mergers which are not subject to EU merger policy).
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Kerber, W., Wendel, J. (2016). Regulatory Networks, Legal Federalism, and Multi-level Regulatory Systems. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G. (eds) Law and Economics in Europe and the U.S.. The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47471-7_7
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