ABSTRACT This special issue demonstrates that regulatory studies and criminology both have virtue. Regulatory criminology has neglected virtues that exceed the sum of its parts. The editors did a splendid job of pointing out in their introduction that criminology created a number of theoretical traditions that have had moments of passing value and relevance to regulatory studies. In both fields, and at their intersections, one of these traditions, an economism of rational choice, even enjoyed periods of domination. At times, this narrowed scholarly imagination has won Nobel Prizes in economics. Today economists are less present at criminology, law and society, and regulation and governance conferences. Economists must be attracted back so that intellectual renewal on offer from regulatory studies and criminology might broaden their imaginations, and they ours. Regulation and governance can benefit greatly from noting how criminologists integrate insights from micro and macro levels by fine‐grained studies of the modus operandi of lawbreakers that are connected to a historical imagination for the longue durée and a sociological imagination of macrostructures.
Braithwaite et al. (Tue,) studied this question.