Decoupling trends: Drivers of agency independence in telecommunications: An analysis of high and middle‐income countries

Abstract

Global diffusion of regulatory reforms in telecommunications has prevailed in many countries, engendering major institutional changes and entailing the establishment and/or reform of regulatory agencies. Although the triggers and timing of such agentification processes have been more or less similar, agency independence displays significant crosscountry variation. Seeking to explain such variation based on a sample incorporating middle-income countries (MICs), this paper examines the impact of political-institutional settings in which the agencies operate, in addition to the impact of economic parameters. Regression analysis reveals that political rights appear as the central parameter, while their impact is more robust in MICs than in advanced countries. The results underscore considerable cross-national variation in regulatory governance, along with a noteworthy decoupling between MICs and advanced countries. Concurring with the regulatory regionalism perspective, the paper delineates distinct regional clusters, albeit remaining agnostic about the determinants of such clusters.

Greening energy governance through agencification in the Global South: Drivers and implications

“…The literature on policy diffusion has underlined that domestic factors and policy legacies influence diffusion processes as well as the specific design of policy innovations adopted at the national level (Busch & Jörgens, 2005; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Marier, 2017). Similarly, research on agencification in the Global South has highlighted the influence of country‐level political‐institutional differences on the diffusion of agencies as well as on their features (e.g., Dubash & Morgan, 2013; Özel & Unan, 2021). As anticipated, research focused on the MENA has emphasized that the fossil fuel producers' political economy inhibits diffusion mechanisms, constraining the creation of regulatory agencies (Mathieu & Jordana, 2022).…”