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European Agencies: Law and Practices of Accountability

Madalina Busuioc

'There is an extensive and sophisticated literature on European agencies [...] There has, however, been no book-length systematic study of accountability as it pertains to EU agencies, nor has there been such a study that systematically addresses accountability in a rigorous manner to agencies. Madalina Busuioc's monograph is valuable in filling this important gap.' 

This is how OUP series editors Paul Craig and Grainne de Burca summarise in their preface the contribution of Madalina Busuioc's monograph on European Agencies: Law and Practices of Accountability. The book, at the cutting edge of law and public administration, addresses one of the most relevant topics in current European governance: the accountability of European agencies. It examines how the accountability system of European agencies operates formally as well as in practice, through an examination of legal provisions, relevant case law as well as policy documents and extensive interview material.  Reflecting on these findings, the book also offers important theoretical insights for the understanding and study of accountability in a complex regulatory system such as the European Union.

This book is available online, please click .

Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management (Japanese Version)

Michael Power

Mike Power's book Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management has been published in Japanese by Chuo-Keizai in a translation prepared by Shinji Horiguchi.

Managing Food Safety and Hygiene

Bridget Hutter

Food safety and hygiene is of critical importance to us all, yet, as periodic food crises in various countries each year show we are all dependent on others in business and public regulation to ensure that the food we consume in the retailing and hospitality sectors is safe. Bridget Hutter considers the understandings of risk and regulation held by those in business and considers the compliance pressures on managers and owners, and how these relate to understandings of risk and uncertainty.

Using data from an in-depth case study of the food retail and catering sectors in the UK, the research investigates how business risk management practices are influenced by external pressures such as state regulation, consumers, insurance and the media and by pressures within business. The argument of the book is that food businesses in the UK are generally motivated to manage risk. They realize that good risk management aligns with good business practice. However, there are challenges for an industry that is highly segmented in terms of risk management capacity. The findings have implications for contemporary risk regulation in the increasing number of countries that rely on self-regulation.

Managing Food Safety and Hygiene will prove invaluable for academic researchers and students in risk regulation studies, business studies, food studies, organizational studies, social psychology, socio-legal studies, sociology, management, public administration and political science. In addition, the book will also appeal to practitioners; specifically to senior policy makers, regulators and business risk managers charged with managing risk in diverse organizational settings, and across different functional jurisdictions.

This book is available online, please click .

Scientists and The Regulation of Risk

David Demortain

Risks are increasingly regulated by international standards, and scientists play a key role in standardisation. This fascinating book exposes the action of 'invisible colleges' of scientists – loose groups of prominent scientific experts who combine practical experience of risk and control with advisory responsibility – in the formulation of international standards.

Drawing upon the domains of medicines, 'novel foods' and food hygiene, David Demortain investigates new regulatory concepts emerging from invisible colleges, highlighting how they shape consensus and pave the way for international standards. He explores the relationship between science and regulation from theoretic and historic perspectives, and illustrates how scientific experts integrate regulatory actors in commonly agreed modes of control and structures of regulatory responsibilities. Sociological and political implications are also discussed.

Using innovative methodologies and an extensive insight into food and pharmaceutical regulation, this book will provide a much-needed reference tool for scholars and students in a range of fields encompassing science and technology studies, public policy, risk and environmental regulation, and transnational governance.

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Anticipating Risks and Organizing Risk Regulation

Edited by Bridget Hutter and including contributions by eight current or former members of CARR staff (Hofmann, Huber, Hutter, Jennings, Lezaun, Lloyd-Bostock, Lodge, Macrae)

This book shows how we can organize our social, organizational and regulatory policy systems to cope better with the array of local and transnational risks we regularly encounter. Contributors from a range of disciplines - including finance, history, law, management, political science, social psychology, sociology and disaster studies - consider threats, vulnerabilities and insecurities alongside social and organizational sources of resilience and security.

Of particular interest is an examination of the risk regulation dilemmas and innovations involved in managing these risks. The specific analytical focus of the volume is the notion of anticipation, more precisely the anticipation of risks and how the concerns they generate influence the way we organize our policy systems. This distinctive characteristic of the concept of risk is key to its understanding and relates to another intention of the collection, namely to address academic debates about risk and link them to policy concerns. This volume is likely to generate further discussion and research on the concept of 'anticipation' and revitalize discussion of the policy choices between anticipation and resilience.

This book is available online, please click .

Special Issue of Health, Risk and Society on Risk Regulation and Health

Edited by Bridget Hutter and including contributions by seven CARR staff (Bevan, Demortain, Hutter, Kurunmäki, Lloyd-Bostock, Macrae, Miller)

The focus is on risk regulation issues with particular reference to National Health Service infrastructure and service provision and the risk regulation of critical areas. The papers examine reforms in the context of diminishing confidence in medical experts. It is argued that there has been a shift from professional self-regulation to regulatory oversight and a growing prominence of accounting and costing.

The transferability of regulatory solutions across domains and across the private-public divide is questioned, for example, difficulties in implementing risk-based regulation are discussed, most particularly with reference to the availability of reliable data.

It is argued that the new systems can produce contradictory incentives and may even contribute to systemic provision risks. For example, it is argued that the construction of economic risks in the health sector may generate unforeseen social risks. Risk events and public and political unease seem to lead to tinkering with the system but not tinkering based on learning and the full use of the available evidence.

Learning from crises and routine organizational data and experience are crucial. Risk regulation research should be important in forging a more evidence based way forward. In particular these studies can encourage cautious learning from other domains.

This book is available online, please click .

Organized Uncertainty: Designing a world of risk management 

Michael Power

Since the mid-1990s risk management has undergone a dramatic expansion in its reach and significance, being transformed from an aspect of management control to become a benchmark of good governance for banks, hospitals, schools, charities and many other organizations.

Numerous standards for risk management practice have been produced by a variety of transnational organizations. While these many designs and blueprints are accompanied by ideals of enterprise, value production, and good governance, it is argued that the rise of risk management has also coincided with an intensification of auditing and control processes.

The legalization and bureacratization of organizational life has increased because risk management has created new demands for proof and evidence of action. In turn, these demands have generated new risks to reputation.

In short, this important book traces the rise of the managerial concept of risk and the different logics and values which underpin it, showing that it has much less to do with real dangers and opportunities than might be thought, and more to do with organizational accountability and legitimacy.

This book is available online, please click .

Internationalisation and Economic Institutions

Mark Thatcher

This book examines when, how and why internationalisation affects national economic institutions. It confronts questions at the heart of debates in political economy and comparative politics: What does internationalisation of markets mean? Who are its carriers in domestic arenas? Through which mechanisms does it affect decisions about institutional reform? What are the patterns of institutional outcomes in the face of internationalisation?

The author distinguishes technological and economic modes of internationalisation from policy forms, namely regulatory change in powerful overseas nations and by the EU. He shows that, contrary to expectations, the first made little impact whereas regulatory reforms by the US and EU undermined long-standing national institutions.

The book thus rejects the view that technological and economic forms of internationalisation drive institutional change. Instead, it shows that policy forms of internationalisation are more influential because they become part of domestic decision making and thereby spur reform.

The book's arguments are sustained by an analysis of five strategic sectors in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, over the period 1965-2005. It combines cross-national, historical and cross-sectoral comparisons to show the carriers, mechanisms and outcomes of internationalisation.

This book is available online, please click .

The Politics of Public Service Bargains

Christopher Hood and Martin Lodge

The traditional understandings that structure the relationships between public servants and the wider political system have undergone considerable change. This book develops a unique analytical perspective to account for diverse bargains within systems of executive government. Drawing on comparative experiences from different state traditions, it examines ideas and contemporary developments along three key dimensions of any Public Service Bargain: reward, competency, and loyalty and responsibility.

The book points to diverse and differentiated developments across national systems of executive government, and suggests how different 'bargains' are prone to cheating by their constituent parties.

This book is available online, please click .

Organizational Encounters with Risk

Bridget Hutter and Michael Power (Eds)

Organizational encounters with risk range from errors and anomalies to outright disasters. In a world of increasing interdependence and technological sophistication, the problem of understanding and managing such risks has grown ever more complex.

Organizations and their participants must often reform and reorganise themselves in response to major events and crises, dealing with the paradox of managing the potentially unmanageable. Organizational responses are influenced by many factors, such as the representational capacity of information systems and concerns with legal liability.

In this collection, leading experts on risk management from a variety of disciplines address these complex features of organizational encounters with risk. They raise critical questions about how risk can be understood and conceived by organizations, and whether it can be 'managed' in any realistic sense at all. This book is an important reminder that the organizational management of risk involves much more than the cool application of statistical method.

This book is available online, please click .

Regulatory Innovation: A Comparative Perspective

Julia Black, Martin Lodge and Mark Thatcher (Eds)

Much hype has been generated about the importance of innovation for public and private sector organizations.  Regulatory Innovation offers the first detailed study of regulatory innovation in a multiplicity of countries and domains.

This book draws on in-depth studies of innovation in regulatory instruments and practices across high- and low- technology sectors, across different countries and from the early to the late 20th century.  Highlighting different 'worlds' of regulatory innovation - those of the individual, the organization, the state, the global polity, and innovation itself, this book offers a fresh perspective and valuable insights for the practice and study of regulatory innovation.

The explicit comparative focus of the case studies and the 'worlds of regulatory innovation' approach make this book essential reading for academic researchers and students interested in regulation.

La Société de l'Audit: l'Obsession du Contrôle

Michael Power, translated by Armelle Lebrun

French translation of Michael Power's 1997 book, The Audit Society, containing a new foreword.

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Controlling Modern Government: variety, commonality and change

Edited by Christopher Hood, Oliver James, B Guy Peters and Colin Scott

Are public sector institutions being exposed to ever-greater oversight, audit and inspection in the name of efficiency, accountability and risk management? Controlling Modern Government explores the long-term development of controls over government across five major state traditions in developed democracies - US, Japan, variants of continental-European models, a Scandinavian case and variants of the Westminster model.

Regulating Law

Edited by John Braithwaite, Nicola Lacey, Christine Parker and Colin Scott

To date, regulatory scholarship has mainly been applied to specific legislative programs and/or agencies for the social and economic regulation of business. In this volume, a cast of internationally renowned legal scholars each apply a 'regulatory perspective' to their own area of law. The volume examines the collision of regulation by law with regulation by other means and provides an innovative regulatory perspective for the whole of law.

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Preparing for the Future: strategic planning in the US Air Force

By Michael Barzelay and Colin Campbell

This study provides an inside look at how the US Air Force came to formulate and declare its 'strategic intent' for developing the organisation's capabilities over a timeline of more than twenty years. US Air Force strategic intent is not a plan, but a shared commitment to strengthening specific core competencies and critical future capabilities.

Michael Barzelay and Colin Campbell reveal how one of the US's most significant public organisations has reassessed its own strategic intent.

Paradoxes in Public Sector Reform: an international comparison

Edited by Joachim Jens Hesse, Christopher Hood and B Guy Peters

As the study of administrative reform has progressed over the past decades, worthy descriptive studies of those changes have accumulated across a number of countries. This volume seeks to push the analysis beyond that first generation of research, focussing on "paradoxes" or unintended effects of those reform efforts.

It, therefore, does not try to provide a detailed description of administrative change in the fourteen systems considered, but to look selectively at those changes from a "paradox perspective", i.e. highlighting apparently surprising or unintended aspects of administrative reform.

The administrative systems systematically discussed here include the main advanced, industrial democracies, but also transitional and developing countries - such as the People's Republic of China and the former socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the European Union is analysed as a case of an administrative system being constructed from those existing within its constituent parts. 

Reward for High Public Office: Asian and Pacific Rim States

Edited by Christopher Hood, B Guy Peters and Grace Lee

The choices made by governments about how to reward their top employees reveal a great deal about their values and their assumptions about governing.

This book examines rewards of high public office in seven Asian political systems, a particularly rich set of cases for exploring the causes and consequences of the rewards of high public office, having some of the most generous and most meagre reward packages in the world.

Reward for High Public Office includes case studies focusing on Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Singapore. It will interest students and researchers of politics, public administration and Asian studies.

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Regulation

By Colin Scott
Series: The International Library of Essays in Law and Legal Theory (Second Series)

Legal scholarship is concerned with distinctive issues and problems of regulatory governance. This volume draws together writings on regulation which problematise law in regulatory settings and which introduce problems of regulatory law to legal theory. The main themes addressed are: the character of regulatory law; legal theories of state and market; regulatory rules; organizations and institutional variety; accounting for regulation.

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The Politics of Delegation

Edited by Mark Thatcher and Alec Stone Sweet

There is a growing interest in delegation to non-majoritarian institutions in Europe, following both the spread of principal-agent theory in political science and law and increasing delegation in practice.

During the 1980s and 1990s, governments and parliaments in West European nations have delegated powers and functions to non-majoritarian bodies - the EU, independent central banks, constitutional courts and independent regulatory agencies. Whereas elected policy makers had been increasing their roles over several decades, delegation involves a remarkable reversal or at least transformation of their position.

This volume examines key issues about the politics of delegation: how and why delegation has taken place; the institutional design of delegation to non-majoritarian institutions; the consequences of delegation to non-majoritarian institutions; the legitimacy of non-majoritarian institutions.

The book addresses these questions both theoretically and empirically, looking at central areas of political life - central banking, the EU, the increasing role of courts and the establishment and impacts of independent regulatory agencies.

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The Labyrinths of Information: challenging the wisdom of systems

By Claudio Ciborra

 A reflective discussion of information in the contemporary organization. Current descriptions of the design, implementation, management, and use of information technology in organizations are largely founded on notions of rationality, science, and method. In this volume the author focuses on an alternative centre of gravity: human existence in everyday life.

Whilst informed by the author's own research and consultancy work, the volume eschews the overly technical character of much writing about IT in favour of an exploration of the subject through various conceptual prisms.

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British Rail 1974-97: From Integration to Privatisation

By Terence Gourvish

This book, written by Britain's leading railway historian, provides an authoritative account of the progress made by British Rail prior to privatisation and a unique insight into its difficult role in the government's privatisation planning from 1989. Based on privileged access to the British Railway Board's rich archives, Terry Gourvish presents a comprehensive analysis which traces the external pressures on British Rail and its own changing internal organization between 1974 and 1997.

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On Different Tracks: Designing Railway Regulation in Britain and Germany

By Martin Lodge

The governments of several countries are in the process of reforming their regulatory regimes for the railways, and there is much debate about the appropriate regulation of transport in general and railways in particular--especially in light of environmental concerns about traffic congestion and air pollution and economic concerns about the financing of infrastructure and services. This volume investigates how Britain and Germany regulated their railways at three different points in time over the past century: after the First World War, after the Second World War, and in the 1990s.

 Its central focus is the design of regulatory regimes and the impact of institutional factors on the selection of design ideas and on processes of isomorphism. By placing a comparative analysis of regulatory design in a historical context and an institutional framework, the author contributes to the current debate on the emergence of the regulatory state in the late 20th century.

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La Societa dei Controlli, Translation of The Audit Society (1997) by Fabrizio Panozzo

By Michael Power

Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. Why has this happened? What does it mean when a society invests so heavily in an industry of checking and when more and more individuals find themselves subject to formal scrutiny? Does it lead to greater efficiency and accountability?

This book is the first systematic exploration of 'audit' as a principle of social organization and control. The author critically examines the reasons, means, and consequences of this audit explosion. He raises important questions about the efficacy of audit processes and suggests that the consequences of this must be carefully evaluated.

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Utilities Reform in Europe

Edited by David Coen and Mark Thatcher

Public utilities constitute a large section of Europe' economy, and they have historically been at the center of national states and their industrial strategies. However, the recent creation of the single market and the liberalization of European utility sectors have resulted in an expansion of EU/EC economic regulation. This book examines the interaction among the economic and political actors and raises questions regarding the format regulation.

The chapters discuss the history of utilities reform, assess the nature of the changes, and address the issues of institutional modification. Four themes emerge from the collection - the characteristics of Europe-wide reform, the nature of national variance, cross-sectional variations, and the institutional arrangements that can emerge to accommodate the regulatory regime.

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Biotechnology 1996-2000: the years of controversy

Edited by George Gaskell and M. Bauer

Biotechnology has been the focus of both national and international controversy in recent years. Embryonic cloning, GM food production, transgenic animals and genetic information have all been the subject of intense public scrutiny. Drawing on recent research, this book presents a timely series of comparative analyses of biotechnology in the public spheres of Europe and North America.

It includes comparative chapters on the changing contours of policy and regulation, media coverage and public perceptions; the origins and nature of public concerns; the contrasting receptions of biotechnology in Europe and North America; and science and the public. In addition, it presents synoptic accounts of the national situations in 14 European countries, the USA and Canada.

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The Government of Risk: Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes

By Christopher Hood, Henry Rothstein and Robert Baldwin

Why are vast sums spent on controlling some risks but not others? Is there any logic to the techniques we use in risk regulation? These are key questions explored in The Government of Risk. This book exposes the components of risk regulation systems and examines their interaction and explanation. The approach employed is of a high policy relevance as well as of considerable theoretical importance.

Also available in paperback.  Visit publisher's website for further information on this title:  

Regulation and Risk: Occupational Health and Safety on the Railways

By Bridget Hutter

Regulating risks in modern societies increasingly involves governments guiding and co-opting corporate risk management systems. This book examines the feasibility of this with reference to occupational health and safety on Britain's railways. It raises important questions about how workplace risks are managed and what influence the law can have in this. These issues are especially significant in the wake of major rail disasters and in the face of the increasing popularity of risk-based approaches to corporate governance.

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Cranston's Consumers and the Law, 3rd Edition

By Colin Scott and Julia Black

The third edition of Cranston's Consumers and the Law brings the reader fully up to date with developments in consumer law and includes important new material on utilities and financial services regulation. An internet home page has also been established for readers of this book.

The home page has two main purposes. First, it provides links to websites containing primary sources such as codes, consultation documents and reports which are not always accessible in law libraries. Secondly it provides periodic updating information on key developments in law and policy.

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The Politics of Telecommunications

By Mark Thatcher

This book examines and compares policy making in telecommunications in Britain and France over the last three decades.

The book also examines questions related to liberalization, regulation and the role of the nation state in an increasingly international economy.

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