Research on regulation has focussed on explaining the independence of sector regulators and assessing the effects of regulations on markets. This article broadens the scope of such research by studying and explaining how regulatory actors interact at the de facto level in a multi-actor regulatory arrangement when making regulatory decisions in the telecommunications sector of Colombia. We propose that regulatory decisions depend on the manner in which actors influence each other. In this article, we are not only focussing on the policy outcome itself but also on the regulatory decision-making process. We performed a social network analysis and used an exponential random graph model to analyse the data. Our findings suggest that actors’ level of influence is affected by the access they have to other organisations, the divergence of positions they have with these other organisations and the power resources of an organisation. In addition, there are structural network characteristics that affect regulatory decisionmaking.

Political leaders rely on narratives to make sense of crises, but the extent to which such narratives are used to (de)mobilize scientific evidence in policy responses has not been fully explored. Based on the analysis of public messages and communications of the presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, we discuss how they have narratively approached the Covid-19 crisis, particularly with respect to the degree of their reliance on scientific expertise. Building on debates on policy narratives, crisis management, and evidence-based policymaking, we argue that the narratives presidents devised had significant (and mostly negative) effects on the design of policy responses. Their narratives sidelined (Bolsonaro), leveraged (Duque), or limited (López-Obrador) the role of scientific expertise in policy responses. Thus, in contrast to previous literature, these narratives aligned more with the president's agendas and personal biases, than with the need to explain the crisis for their societies or to design appropriate policies.

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This article presents a conceptual model based on social‐network measures to capture how regulatory decisions are made at the de facto level, using data from Colombia's telecommunications sector. “De facto” means how decision making takes place in practice and how the actors involved in the process perceive it. The data is the product of a social‐ network analysis survey applied to the actors involved in the country's telecommunications sector. The results suggest that in the case of Colombia, the decision‐making process functions as a sparse or fragmented network where there are few central actors in a very influential position. We find that while the sector regulator and the telecommunications ministry influence decisions, market operators, trade organizations, and the competition authority have similar leverage in the decision‐making process. This article contributes to recent research on regulatory governance that has shown that sector regulators must interact with other organizations when making regulatory decisions, and these interactions occur at the de facto level. It offers a way to conceptualize these interactions and presents data from a region not often studied.