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Is experimentalist governance self‐limiting or self‐reinforcing? Strategic uncertainty and recursive rulemaking in European Union electricity regulation
Author(s) -
Rangoni Bernardo,
Zeitlin Jonathan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
regulation and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.417
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1748-5991
pISSN - 1748-5983
DOI - 10.1111/rego.12309
Subject(s) - experimentalism , european union , rulemaking , corporate governance , economics , process tracing , political science , positive economics , law and economics , epistemology , law , politics , management , international trade , philosophy
Is experimentalist governance (XG) self‐limiting or self‐reinforcing by virtue of its relationship to strategic uncertainty as an essential scope condition? This article tackles this important but understudied question by elaborating a series of idealtypical pathways for the temporal evolution of XG in specific policy domains, ranging from reversion to hierarchical governance through endogenous reduction of strategic uncertainty at one extreme to institutionalization of experimentalism as a multipurpose governance architecture at the other. It then goes on to test the empirical validity of these contrasting theoretical expectations about the long‐term relationship between XG and strategic uncertainty through a process‐tracing analysis of electricity regulation in the European Union over a series of policy cycles since the 1990s. Building on and extending previous research in this domain, this article's findings strengthen empirical confidence in the theoretical expectation that XG is self‐reinforcing, while diminishing confidence in the claim that it is self‐limiting.