Exploring Trends and Variations in Agency Scope

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Inhoud: What are the trends in the design of regulatory agencies’ scope of responsibilities? To shed some light on this issue, we explore temporal, sectoral, national and regional variations in the scope of agencies across 16 different policy domains and 4...8 countries. This exercise represents a first step towards a theoretically driven empirical explanation of the determinants of agency scope. Focusing on the distinction between single- and multi-sector agencies, we demonstrate how agency scope is contingent on national, sectoral and regional characteristics, and provide a preliminary analysis of the characteristics of these variations. Our analysis of the data demonstrates, first, that the scope of agencies has been expanding fast since the late 1990s, often as a result of the extension of regulatory agencification to new sectors, and second, that multi-sectoral agencies are more common in Europe than in Latin America, in economic regulation than in social regulation, and in smaller countries than in bigger ones.hide

A Method for Measuring Excessive Environmental Regulatory Burden in the Australian Rail Industry

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Inhoud: For the Australian rail industry, environmental regulation is a regulatory hotspot causing suboptimal rail operations and business performance. Attempts to measure the cost of regulatory burden are few, more so given the conceptual and practical ch...allenges. This article employs the prism of environmental regulation pertaining to the Australian rail industry to recap the concept of regulatory burden and evaluate possible measurement tools for costing regulatory burden. Existing models of regulatory cost measurement are adapted and applied to priority areas of dysfunctional environmental regulation across Australia. By drawing on results from a pilot study, the suitability of the methodology for quantifying an industry’s regulatory burden is assessed. The article should be of interest to managers and regulators striving for more equitable and efficient regulatory approaches.hide

Postal Markets and Electronic Substitution: What is the Impact of Intermodal Competition on Regulatory Practices and Institutions?

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Inhoud: The increasing convergence between postal products and telecom applications is a new phenomenon in the communications environment: postal operators provide new services on telecom infrastructures, telecom infrastructures are likely to substitute la...st mile mail delivery and consumers are likely to demand a secure combination of electronic and physical mail. In the course of the increased substitutability of physical mail by electronic communications and continually decreasing physical mail volumes, it becomes obvious that regulatory regimes in general and regulatory institutions in particular should co-evolve in the future. But, there is hardly any discussion in academia or in practice about the consequences for regulation. Relevant questions are: which parts of current regulation will become redundant? Is there additional regulation needed due to new bottlenecks or changes in consumer behaviour? In our qualitative analysis, we investigate the implications of intermodal competition and growing convergence between postal and telecommunications services on regulatory institutions and regimes. We provide a comparison between the networks and compare the scope of universal services and issues concerning market power regulation in the two different industries. Furthermore, we develop the idea of a unified universal definition with a holistic understanding of the topic before concluding that there is need for a unified regulatory approach in the future. Such an approach will likely consist of a jointly-defined communications universal service and consequently of corresponding regulatory strategies for policy makers.hide

Liberalisation versus National Protectionism

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Inhoud: The new European Postal Directive of 2008 provides the postal market with new opportunities as it allows for the gradual development of competition of services of general interests in Europe. However, the directive leaves room for uncertainties and... the full opening of the postal market is hampered by a number of existing and emerging barriers. Thus the European Commission is handling complaints about state aid which is granted to national postal services in order to facilitate their role as service of national interest. Much harder to challenge are a number of “de facto barriers” which fall outside competition law. Currently, the infringement procedure is the aggressive weapon against Member States contravening the Treaty. However, this procedure does not offer an overall solution to remove all trade barriers especially the “de facto barriers”. In contrast, the Open Method of Co-ordination could be used to set policy and norms for the postal market. These could serve as best practices to manage the postal market by objectives rather than through enforceable laws.hide