Is experimentalist governance self‐limiting or self‐reinforcing? Strategic uncertainty and recursive rulemaking in European Union electricity regulation

Abstract

AbstractIs experimentalist governance (XG) self‐limiting or self‐reinforcing by virtue of its relationship to strategic uncertainty as an essential scope condition? This article tackles this important but understudied question by elaborating a series of idealtypical pathways for the temporal evolution of XG in specific policy domains, ranging from reversion to hierarchical governance through endogenous reduction of strategic uncertainty at one extreme to institutionalization of experimentalism as a multipurpose governance architecture at the other. It then goes on to test the empirical validity of these contrasting theoretical expectations about the long‐term relationship between XG and strategic uncertainty through a process‐tracing analysis of electricity regulation in the European Union over a series of policy cycles since the 1990s. Building on and extending previous research in this domain, this article's findings strengthen empirical confidence in the theoretical expectation that XG is self‐reinforcing, while diminishing confidence in the claim that it is self‐limiting.