International authority and national regulation: Architects, engineers, and the European economic community.

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of relations between international authority and national systems for the public regulation of professionals. It emphasizes the value of the cross-national comparative study of the organization of professions, and stresses the political role of the professions as diplomatic negotiations affect their domains. At issue is the equivalence of registration requirements. The E.E.C. objective of aiding migration through harmonization of registration requirements encounters opposition from national interests associated with professions and their regulation. Their reconciliation is a precondition for implementation of the European interest of a freer labor market for professionals. The paper demonstrates how the various national professional associations, international liaison committees linking such groups, national regulatory agencies, other departments of national governments, and the units of the Community's own structure, help to shape or block realization of this objective. It concludes with a discussion of the conditions for development of international public policy concerning the professions.

Occupational Licensing Versus Company-Led Training

“…During the second half of the 1990s, the critical phase of the negotiations on maintenance qualifications, the balance of European educational cooperation was rather poor. Until then, the Commission had achieved mutual recognition only for a series of liberal professions and after considerable difficulties (Orzack 1983;Berggreen-Merkel 1999). A new approach, the 'Bologna process', was launched by some of the European governments in 1998 with a view to standardizing some of the basic European higher educational institutions, but the Member States of the Union systematically thwarted the Commission's efforts to establish itself as the coordinator of this movement (Croché 2006).…”

“…The efforts made by the European Commission on these lines eventually brought to light the impossibility of harmonization. They failed owing to the strong resistance put up by the nation-states and to the lack of marketbased demand (Orzack 1983;Bjornavold and Sellin 1997;BerggreenMerkel 1999). The nation-states have consistently refused to make any concessions when it comes to educational sovereignty; for example, in the European Treaty of 1992 the states laid down paragraphs requiring programmes and actions by the European institutions to be in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, excluding any drafting and designing of common training policy and prohibiting any standardization of the regulations, contents and certifications in the field of education.…”

Assessing Capture Risks in the Regulatory Mechanism: Insights from Kenya’s Regulation of Professionals in the Construction Labour Market

“…In Europe, prior to the Carter, Spence and Muzio (2015) suggestion, research in professional regulation mainly focussed on deregulation and reregulation of professions in pursuit of competitiveness in the common market (Brosio 1997; Garoupa 2004; O’Leary 2015; Orzack 1983; Paterson, Fink and Ogus 2003; Van Den Bergh 1997; Zirnstein and Franca 2016). Mainly their concern was with removal of entry restrictions especially for non-resident professionals in a particular EU country.…”

“…Perhaps this may be so because the legal and medical professions compared to others happen to be highly regulated in the US and Europe (Garoupa 2004) and, also the oldest (Law and Kim 2004). Apart from Orzack (1983) that considered the regulation of architects and engineers in the EU market, it is rare to find research work that covers the gamut of construction professions.…”