We have witnessed a rise of hybrid regulators in transnational governance, and the regimes they form have grown in number, complexity, and importance. They are directly involved in rule making, provide crucial information, and conduct supportive tasks, such as arbitration, certification, or mobilisation, to other rule makers. In our paper, we examine the complex organisational ecology in the transnational governance regime of environmental sustainability, including public, commercial, and civil-society interests. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between the level of hybridisation of regulatory bodies and their degree of specialisation. The analysis of a medium number of cases shows that highly hybridised bodies tend to endorse a bundling role whereas weakly hybridised organisations mostly function as focussing bodies specialising in a very limited number of regulatory tasks. These insights help to understand the evolution of regulatory governance while pointing out the advantages and limitations of this form of transnational governance for the management of complex and interdependent issues such as sustainability.

Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly questioned the democraticness and the authority of transnational multi‐stakeholder organizations, especially those that regulate the internet. To contribute to this discussion, we studied the “democratic anchorages” and the regulatory authority of 23 internet regulators. In particular, we conducted a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis assessing whether and which anchorages correspond to necessary and/or sufficient conditions for exerting regulatory authority. Our results show that strong anchorage in democratic procedures is specifically relevant for this outcome. Further, we find that weak anchorage in democratically elected politicians leads to high regulatory authority, confirming the significance of non‐state actors in this policy field. More generally, our findings support but also qualify expectations about the compatibility and mutual reinforcement of democratic quality and regulatory authority at the transnational level.

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More and more Western European radical right‐wing populist parties participate in the governments of their respective countries. At least some of these parties moderate—that is, become less radical—once they join the government; others, however, do not. Although the literature has addressed such moderation, the conditions that lead to it have not been analyzed comprehensively. In this paper, we use a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA, N = 14) to determine what conditions are consistently associated with moderation across cases. We find that the degree of governmental responsibility a party takes over is as important as its internal dynamic. In a ruling coalition, compromises must be found, which can create high internal tensions within the radical right‐wing populist party. Joining government can thus have its price: a crisis of party identity and a strong compulsion to moderate.