Regulation, the Regulatory State and European Politics

The term ‘regulatory state ’ entered the vocabulary of students of European Politics over twelve years ago with the publication, in West European Politics, of Giandomenico Majone’s seminal ‘The rise of the regulatory state in Europe ’ (Majone 1994).1 Underlying Majone’s argument was the diagnosis of two key trends, one being an overall shift towards the use of legal authority or regulation over the other tools of stabilisation and redistribution, the other the European Commission’s expansionist role through the use of influence over policy content in the face of an absence of other, especially budgetary tools (see also Majone 1997a). Since then, it has become commonplace to state that we live in the age of the regulatory state, characterised by privatisation of public services, the establishment of quasi-autonomous regulatory authorities and the formalisation of relationships within policy domains (see Loughlin and Scott 1997, Moran 2002). In many ways, the field of regulation could be said to have witnessed a process of institutionalisation over the past two decades. Interest in regulation has moved from an initial curiosity in the impact of technological change, to the policy trend of the