Theorizing Regulatory Intermediaries

TLDR

Regulation is usually seen as a two‑party relationship between a regulator and a target, but intermediaries also play diverse roles such as providing expertise, facilitating implementation, monitoring behavior, and building trust. The study proposes an agenda to analyze regulation as a multi‑party relationship centered on intermediaries. The authors develop a regulator‑intermediary‑target model, extend it, and examine how intermediaries can give rise to different forms of regulatory capture.

Abstract

Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (R) and a rule-taker or target (T). We set out an agenda for the study of regulation as a three- (or more) party relationship, with intermediaries (I) at the center of the analysis. Intermediaries play major and varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation, from monitoring the behavior of regulatory targets to building communities of assurance and trust. After developing the basic regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, we discuss important extensions and variations of the model. We then discuss the varieties of regulatory capture that may appear where intermediaries are involved.