ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the growth and changing nature of regulation and some of the theories that have been advanced to explain its increasing prominence. It presents three conceptual models that have been developed to describe regulation's increasingly important role within modern democratic liberal capitalist societies: the 'regulatory state', 'regulatory capitalism' and 'regulatory governance'. Regulation has emerged as a distinct and increasingly important mode of governance. 'Regulatory governance' eloquently captures both the growth and changing nature of regulation. Regulatory governance reflects that as regulation has grown in importance, it also has changed. Regulatory governance recognises that top-down 'command and control' regulatory models are too narrow and limited to deal with increasingly complex social and economic issues about which different audiences have different values, interests and perspectives. The chapter concludes by identifying implications that flow from the choice for the examination of the modern regulatory endeavour.
