Transnational Regulatory Governance

Abstract

In the previous chapters we have located the national regulatory state within a wider multi-level governance framework. That is, increasingly regulatory policymaking takes place within a context shaped by both governmental interpenetration at a number of levels, including at the supranational level, and rising reliance on public-private governance processes and networks. We have questioned claims that inevitably these processes necessarily weaken national state capacities — strong states appear to draw strength from their strategic steerage functions and the shedding of more direct operational responsibilities, and are able to adapt civil society processes to help shape and deliver effective policies. Also we have recognized that regulatory governance in advanced societies increasingly utilizes ‘de-centred’ regulatory models and wider social practices and are not reliant on more direct state, legal and commandand-control approaches. Even the EU, an exemplar of the regulatory state in a high legal form at a supra- and inter-governmental level, recently has sought to extend softer and more decentralized forms of policy convergence through benchmarking, voluntarism and similar ‘open methods of coordination’.