Professor Robert Baldwin, NAB 7.08

LLM, MSc Law and Accounting students and other MSc students when places available (MPA Programme (all streams).

This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSEforYou.

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.