Changing Regulatory Institutions in Britain and North America

Joseph Garcea is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan.

This useful book examines the recent changes in regulatory institutions
in Britain and North America. The principal focus is on regulation
within the economic sector rather than within the social or
environmental sectors.

The authors examine a wide range of issues and themes, including the
independence and autonomy of regulators, regulatory implementation
strategies, paths or strategies for regulatory reform, the convergence
and collision of regulatory regimes, institutionalization and
deinstitutionalization within these regimes, and changing modes or forms
of regulation. The authors discuss how the “regulatory institutions”
in Canada’s transportation, energy, and
broadcasting/telecommunications sectors have for most of this century
operated as virtual “miniature governments” responsible for
“regulation-making, licencing, adjudicative, quasi-judicial, subsidy
spending, policy making, and policy advisory and monitoring roles.”

In addition to a comparative overview of recent changes in the
regulatory institutions, the authors provide an elegant conceptual and
theoretical framework for the comparative analysis of regulatory
institutions. One of the book’s major theoretical parts examines the
effect of interests and ideas on the shapes of regulatory regimes in the
countries under consideration.

This engaging book will appeal to academics and to general readers who
are interested in regulatory regimes.