The Political Foundations of Regulatory Policy

Abstract

Since 1970, scholars in economics, law and political science have produced important new insights about the political causes of regulatory policies. Like much of the work in applied economics, research on the political economy of regulation normally addresses a specific policy question in a specific country, and hence, implicitly or explicitly, takes as given a particular set of political and economic institutions. Most of this research is by Americans, and so is based on assumptions about the political system that hold in few countries. Examples are the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government, the special features of the American Constitution (especially the due process amendment), and the structure of the American legislative system. Consequently, the generalizability of this work is dubious.

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