Extending Experimentalist Governance

"Earleir versions of the chapters were discussed at workshops at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 and at the University of Amsterdam in 2012"--page v.

Annotation. Far-reaching transformations in the nature of contemporary governance can be observed, within and beyond the nation-state. At the heart of these transformations, Jonathan Zeitlin argues, is the emergence of new forms of 'experimentalist' governance, based on framework rule-making and revision through comparative review of alternative approaches to advancing common objectives in different local contexts. The proliferation of these new organizational forms can best be understood as a response to increased environmental volatility and complexity, which have overwhelmed in many settings the capacities of conventional hierarchical governance and 'command-and-control' regulation. Although robust examples can be found in many jurisdictions, including the United States, the epicenter of these developments is the European Union, where experimentalist governance arrangements have been institutionalized across a wide range of policy domains over the past 15 years. These have not only facilitated the extension of European integration into new, politically sensitive policy fields, but also enabled the EU in many areas to produce high-quality, revisable rules capable of broad application across a diverse polity of 500 million inhabitants and 27 member states. In this inaugural lecture,Zeitlin analyzes the properties of these experimentalist arrangements, examines their development within the EU, and opens up new research questions about their influence on governance processes within the member states and beyond the Union's borders. This title can be previewed in Google Books - http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789056296742.

What does non-hierarchical governance mean? Under what conditions are actors likely to engage in it? Which trajectory best captures its long-term evolution? Through which mechanisms does it overcome gridlock? To respond to these questions at the heart of regulatory governance, Experimentalist Governance develops an analytical framework that draws on contemporary debates but seeks to overcome their limitations. Notably, it offers a definition of non-hierarchical (experimentalist) governance that goes beyond institutional structures, focusing attention on actors' choices and strategies. It shows that, contrary to expectations, functional and political pressures were more influential than distributions of legal power, and bolstered one another. Strong functional demands and political opposition influence actors' capacity of using powers which, de jure, might be concentrated in their own hands. Indeed, actors can use non-hierarchical governance to aid learning and mould political support. Conversely, they may override legal constraints and impose their views on others, insofar as they are equipped with confidence and powerful coalitions beforehand. This book also challenges conservative views that non-hierarchical governance is doomed to wither away, showing that, on the contrary, it is often resilient. Finally, it demonstrates that, far from being alternatives, positive (shadow-of-hierarchy) and negative (penalty-default) mechanisms to avoid gridlock are frequently complementary. By analysing five crucial domains (electricity, gas, communications, finance, and pharmaceuticals) in the European Union, an examination is made of when, how, and why non-hierarchical institutions affect policy processes and outcomes. Combining temporal, cross-sectoral, and within-case comparisons with process-tracing, this book ultimately illustrates the conditions, trajectories, and mechanisms of non-hierarchical governance.

Extending Experimentalist Governance? takes as its point of departure three observations about the current state of transnational regulation within and beyond the EU: · Across a wide and expanding range of policy fields, the EU has developed over the past 15 years a new architecture of experimentalist governance based on framework rule making and revision through recursive review of implementation experience in diverse local contexts. · Through a variety of institutional mechanisms and channels, the EU is actively seeking to extend its own internal rules, norms, standards, and governance processes beyond the Union's borders to third countries and the wider world. · In a number of major issue-areas, experimentalist regimes with similar architectural features to those within the EU appear to be developing on a global or transnational scale. The book's goal is to explore, both empirically and theoretically, the relationship between these three contemporaneous trends, and to assess their consequences for the EU's evolving role in transnational regulation. The book tackles these questions about the external dimension of EU experimentalist governance and its relationship to broader trends in transnational regulation through in-depth analysis of recent developments across a series of key policy domains by a distinguished interdisciplinary group of European and North American scholars. The domains addressed include neighbourhood policy, food safety, GMOs, chemicals, forestry, competition, finance, data privacy, disability rights, crisis management, justice, and security.

The UK population is ageing rapidly. While age discrimination laws are seen as having broad potential to address the 'ageing challenge' and achieve instrumental and intrinsic objectives in the context of employment, it is unclear what impact they are having in practice. This monograph addresses two overarching research questions in the employment field: How are UK age discrimination laws operating in practice? How (if at all) could UK age discrimination laws be improved? A reflexive law theoretical standpoint is employed to investigate these issues, applying a mixed methods research design that engages qualitative, quantitative, doctrinal and comparative elements. This book demonstrates the substantial limitations of the Equality Act 2010 (UK) for achieving instrumental and intrinsic objectives. Drawing on qualitative expert interviews, statistical analysis and organisational case studies, it illustrates the failure of age discrimination laws to achieve attitudinal change in the UK, and reveals the limited prevalence of proactive measures to support older workers. Integrating doctrinal analysis, comparative analysis of Finnish law, and the Delphi method, it proposes targeted legal and policy changes to address demographic change, and offers an agenda for reform that may increase the impact of age discrimination laws, and enable them to respond effectively to demographic ageing. Runner up of the 2017 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. The author was also awarded the 2020 ISA-RCSL Adam Podgórecki Junior Prize.

What has been done since the 2008 financial crisis to reform the regulation of derivatives markets? The volume analyzes the goals, limitations, and unexpected outcomes associated with post-crisis international initiatives to regulate these markets, as well as the different transnational, inter-state, and domestic political dynamics that have shaped these outcomes

This book brings together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of European and American scholars to analyze the core theoretical features of the EU's new experimentalist governance architecture and explore its empirical development across a series of key policy domains.

This book represents a significant and timely contribution to the copious literature of the EU as a global actor providing new insights and fresh perspectives into the promotion of human rights and international labour standards in the EU’s external trade relations, building on and stimulating further – the already well-engaged – scientific dialogue on this area of research. In particular, it provides the basis for developing a new analytical structure for better understanding the role of the EU in promoting human rights and international labour standards in global trade and, in particular, for assessing the extent to which and how normative considerations have influenced the adoption of EU legal instruments and policy decisions. This book will appeal to research scholars, post-graduate students, practitioners and human rights activists.