Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RICA (Reputation Matters in the Regulatory State: Re-thinking the Fundamentals of Regulatory Independence, Credibility and Accountability )
Reporting period: 2020-06-01 to 2021-12-31
Reputation-based accounts emphasise the key role of reputation, of organisational image, to understanding bureaucratic power and organisational behaviour. For public organisations (such as regulatory agencies), the successful cultivation of a strong reputation becomes critical to securing regulatory authority beyond formal fiat. In this understanding, the reputation a public organisation cultivates—thorough its response to expectations from its multiple audiences—is the primary source of its power, which can allow it to enlist public support, build its autonomy, protect it from external attacks and ultimately, help ensure its survival. The study of reputation is thus fundamental for public bureaucracies.
A core assumption that the project examines is that of the assumed link between agency insulation and regulatory credibility, re-assessing what shapes stakeholders' perceptions of regulatory outputs. Within dominant understandings, regulatory credibility is said to be premised on agency insulation from politics: independent bodies alone, operating at arm’s length from traditional controls, can secure credible regulation. This assumption has had fundamental systemic implications in practice: the independent agency model has become the defining model for organising regulation across jurisdictions, with significant implications for the structural makeup of nation states and for the rise of non-majoritarianism. Surprisingly, this assumption has not been directly empirically tested. We put the assumption to rigorous empirical testing: Does higher regulatory independence result in higher perceived credibility of regulatory outputs among agency stakeholders?