Having your cake and eating it too: Can regulatory agencies be both independent and accountable?

Maggetti, Martino; Ingold, Karin; Varone, Frédéric (2013). Having your cake and eating it too: Can regulatory agencies be both independent and accountable? Swiss political science review / Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 19(1), pp. 1-25. Wiley 10.1111/spsr.12015

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Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) were created in various sectors and on different governmental levels to implement liberalization policies. This paper investigates the link between IRAs' independence, which is said to promote regulatory credibility and the use of technical expertise, and their accountability, which is related to the need for controlling and legitimizing independent regulators. The literature on the regulatory state anticipates a positive relation between the independence and accountability of IRAs, but systematic empirical evidence is still lacking. To tackle this question, this paper measures and compares the independence and the accountability of IRAs in three differentially liberalized sectors in Switzerland (telecommunications, electricity and railways). With the application of Social Network Analysis, this piece of research shows that IRAs can be de facto independent and accountable at the same time, but the two features do not necessarily co-evolve in the same direction.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Political Science
UniBE Contributor:	Ingold, Karin Mirjam
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 320 Political science
ISSN:	1424-7755
Publisher:	Wiley
Language:	English
Submitter:	Mahboob Hasan
Date Deposited:	26 May 2014 08:35
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 14:33
Publisher DOI:	10.1111/spsr.12015
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Agencies, Accountability, Independence, Networks, Regulation
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/50431