Organizational Variety in Regulatory Governance: An Agenda for a Comparative Investigation of OECD Countries

An analysis of organizational variety in regulatory governance must recognize that, contrary to the classical agency model, regulatory functions are commonly diffused among a number of public and sometimes private bodies. A regimes approach assists in understanding the ways in which diffuse regulatory power is exercised and in identifying central issues for analysis. In this article, six parameters for classifying organizations in regulatory regimes are addressed: ownership, legal form, funding, functions, powers, and governance level. An exploration of these parameters is suggestive of novel approaches to questions of independence and accountability. With wide diffusion of regulatory power, interdependence is as much a hallmark of the regulatory state as the application of any strong independence doctrine. Accountability may be better conceived as consisting both of formal judicial and political mechanisms and of informal day-to-day ways in which those exercising regulatory power have to account to others co-located within the space of a particular regulatory regime.