Professor Robert Baldwin, NAB 7.08

LLM, MSc Law and Accounting students and other MSc students when places available (MPA Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public Policy and Management/MPA International Development/MPA European Public and Economic Policy).

The course aims to give students an essential grounding in theories of regulation encountered in the public policy/administration/legal literature. It examines competing explanations of the origins, development and reform of regulation; the styles and processes of regulation; issues surrounding enforcement; the inter-organisational and international aspects of regulation; and questions of evaluation and accountability.

1. Surveying the Scene: Lenses for viewing regulation; paradoxes and unintended effects; regulation and institutional design.

2. Contrasting Perspectives on Regulatory Incidence: Regulation as functional response; public choice approaches; new institutional accounts; cultural theory.

3. Regulatory Styles and Processes: Classical Regulation; economic alternatives.

4. Regulatory Standard-Setting: Regulatory standard-setting; economics and optimal standard-setting; risk regulation.

5. Regulatory Enforcement: Compliance and deterrence; public and private enforcement; self-regulation.

6. Regulatory Regime Dynamics: The regulatory state; discretion, rules, proceduralization and juridification; regulatory reform; ideas, prophets and entrepreneurs.

7. Evaluating Regulation: What is good regulation?; accountability and regulation; CBA, compliance cost and regulatory review; regulatory competition; whither regulation?

The course is taught by 22, two-hour sessions in variable format (some lecture-discussions, student-paper led discussions, debates).

All students are expected to produce three written essays plus short presentations on topics assigned to them.

R Baldwin, C Scott & C Hood, Socio-Legal Reader on Regulation (1998); R Baldwin & M Cave, Understanding Regulation (1998); A Ogus, Regulation (1994); R Baldwin & C McCrudden, Regulation and Public Law (1987); C Hood, Administrative Analysis (1986); The Tools of Government (1983); R Baldwin, Rules and Government (1994); S Breyer, Regulation and its Reform (1982); E Bardach & R Kagan, Going by the Book (1982); C Sunstein, After the Rights Revolution (1990); M Derthick & P Quirk, The Politics of Deregulation (1985); L Hancher & M Moran, Capitalism, Culture and Regulation (1989), M Bishop, J Kay & C Mayer, The Regulatory Challenge (1995).

Students will be assessed by a three-hour examination in June. The examination will involve answering three questions out of 12.