ABSTRACT
Legibility is a central problem in statecraft. Modern states require information and expertise to ‘read’ and regulate society. Many neo-corporatist advisory and regulatory bodies were dismantled and replaced by systems of ‘regulatory governance’, in which authorities made up of independent experts supervise and regulate economic and societal domains and advise governments on matters of public policy. The chapter provides a critical analysis of independent regulatory authorities as information managers and regulators. It focuses on the Netherlands in its European context. The chapter shows that the shift from neo-corporatism to regulatory governance constituted a reassessment of the contribution made by extraparliamentary bodies to the state’s informational needs and regulatory intentions. Policy-makers were therefore increasingly led to believe that governments and bureaucracies required practical expertise that could be drawn from representatives of societal interest groups, as well as their support. After 1900 the Dutch Chambers were followed by the establishment of national-level advisory councils on economic policy, labour legislation, mining, and education.
