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How statutory duties shape the decision making of an economic regulator: insights from the energy regulatory community, past and present
Author(s) -
HARKER MICHAEL,
READER DAVID
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of law and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.263
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1467-6478
pISSN - 0263-323X
DOI - 10.1111/jols.12339
Subject(s) - statutory law , regulator , statutory interpretation , politics , elite , energy (signal processing) , political science , law , law and economics , public administration , sociology , biology , biochemistry , gene , statistics , mathematics
This article is concerned with how statutory duties structure regulatory decisions. Rather than focusing on the role of the courts, we explore statutory interpretation by a regulator as a quasi‐autonomous exercise, with external influences and internal norms and customs. To investigate this further, we conducted a series of semi‐structured elite interviews with senior members of the energy ‘regulatory community’, past and present. Energy regulation has been selected as a case study due to the controversies in recent years over the legitimate limits of economic regulation, as successive governments have imposed broader public interest goals on the regulator, resulting in a proliferation of statutory objectives. This increased complexity has arguably obscured the appropriate contours and rationales of economic regulation. Nevertheless, it is unrealistic to completely separate regulatory policy and politics.