Deregulation as a Process of Organizational Reduction

Unlike old soldiers, regulatory agencies seem not only never to die, but never to fade away. Yet many regulatory agencies at all levels of government have been charged with having either undesirable or no impacts. One research approach for analyzing their persistence involves examining the strategies that participants (e.g., reformers, agency personnel, regulated industry) in cases of (potential) deregulation, might follow. Deregulation can thus be viewed as a process of organizational reduction, i.e., as a special case of more general reduction or decline processes in organizations. Before discussing the processes of deregulation, we consider the manner in which the concept of deregulation has been used in various ways in the literature. Next, we describe several characteristic forms of deregulation. Finally, the emphasis on process leads to a discussion of the tactics and strategies likely to be employed by agencies and by the regulated parties. A key argument made in this essay is that public regulatory organizations are likely to play active, not passive responding roles in regulatory (including deregulatory) controversies.