ABSTRACT
The term ‘regulatory state’ entered the vocabulary of students of European Politics over 12 years ago with the publication, inWest European Politics, of Giandomenico Majone’s seminal ‘The Rise of the Regulatory State in Europe’ (Majone 1994).1 Underlying Majone’s argument was the diagnosis of two key trends, one being an overall shift towards the use of legal authority or regulation over the other tools of stabilisation and redistribution, the other the European Commission’s expansionist role through the use of influence over policy content in the absence of other, especially budgetary tools (see also Majone 1997a). Since then, it has become commonplace to state that we live in the age of the regulatory state, characterised by privatisation of public services, the establishment of quasiautonomous regulatory authorities and the formalisation of relationships within policy domains (see Loughlin and Scott 1997; Moran 2002). A special issue in 1986 on ‘The Politics of Communications Revolution in
Western Europe’ arguably marked West European Politics’ first major encounter with the theme of regulation. The regulation theme was developed further with the special issue on ‘The Politics of Privatisation in
Western Europe’ in 1988 (edited by Vickers and Wright); the 1994 ‘The State in Western Europe: Retreat or Redefinition’ (edited by Mu¨ller and Wright); and the 2002 ‘The Politics of Delegation’ (edited by Stone Sweet and Thatcher). These titles provide a good indication of the changing interest in regulation in the field of European Politics, moving from an initial curiosity about the impact of technological change, to the policy trend of the selling-off of public sector assets to the wider implications of the regulatory state for the organisation and nature of the state in itself. Other signs of the institutionalisation of regulation as part of the standard menu of political science have been the emergence of text books and edited volumes (Ogus 1994; Baldwin and Cave 1999; Jordana and Levi-Faur 2004; Black et al. 2005; Coen and Heritier 2005), the creation of postgraduate programmes and research centres, as well as, inevitably, the establishment of a journal with ‘Regulation’ in its title (Regulation & Governance). A rough count points to an increase in absolute numbers of articles
devoted to policy issues related to the regulatory state, although when seen in the context of an overall increase in articles within this subfield the trend is somewhat less impressive. Figure 1 charts the trend of regulation-related articles as a ratio of the total number of articles published in each calendar year since the inception of West European Politics. It looks at West European Politics on its own and at the overall trend by including also the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies, and European Union Politics.2
