Governing Through Regulation: Public Policy, Regulation and the Law

Abstract

This is a book for its time: a time when regulation has come of age as a primary tool of governance; and a time when those charged with its formulation and implementation are facing unprecedented challenges and pressures.

Written by an person with more than thirty years’ experience working as a senior executive in heavily regulated industries in Australia, Asia and the United States, as a regulator of industry, and now as an academic, this book marries regulatory theory and practice into a holistic examination of the science and art of regulation, and presents it in a manner that is intelligible and intuitive to regulatory practitioners, as well as academics and their students.

The book's various frameworks enable one to explore and examine the regulatory endeavour without being overwhelmed by its complexity. Through these frameworks, the book demystifies and make sense of the theoretical literature and presents it in the context of the practical challenges facing governments and regulators when deciding whether and how to regulate.

The book examines the regulatory endeavour holistically (from issue identification, through design and implementation, to evaluation), through multiple and varied lenses (including governance, public policy, law, public administration, politics and economics), and employing examples from different countries and industry sectors. As a result, its frameworks are both general enough to apply across different issues and geographies, and specific enough to provide meaningful guidance to practitioners and students of the area.

Keywords: regulation, governance, public policy, law

JEL Classification: K23, K42