Regulatory policy entrepreneurship and reforms: a comparison of competition and financial regulation

Abstract

This article proposes a new perspective for analysing regulatory reforms by emphasising the important role of policy entrepreneurs. We provide a framework for understanding the interaction between appointed regulators and politicians, as well as other players in the policy arena, by emphasising the strategies that entrepreneurial regulators use to promote their agendas. Analysing the individual regulatory entrepreneur’s barriers, goals and strategies helps us gain a better microunderstanding of how regulatory reforms are actually achieved. We maintain that when regulators act as policy entrepreneurs, they change policy outcomes by adopting strategies that promote their agendas. We develop this argument by analysing two case studies of regulatory reforms in Israel: one in the banking sector and one involving changes in competition policy.

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“…Kingdon’s theory is strongly identified with the individual agent and the concept of policy entrepreneurs (PEs) (Jabotinsky and Cohen 2019). PEs are “advocates who are willing to invest their resources – time, energy, reputation, money – to promote a position in return for anticipated future gain” (Kingdon 2014, 179).…”

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“…This is since bureaucrat's immanent role is to implement policy, not design it. Theoretically when referring to policy design, agents of policy change are referred to as veto players (Immergut, 1992;Tsebelis, 2002). The latter are individual or collective actors whose agreement is necessary to change the status quo (Tsebelis, 1999(Tsebelis, , 2002.…”

“…The latter are individual or collective actors whose agreement is necessary to change the status quo (Tsebelis, 1999(Tsebelis, , 2002. Veto players have preferences over public policy outcomes, and these are consistent across the continuous policy choices the veto player faces (Immergut, 1992;Tsebelis, 2002). Furthermore, Tsebelis argues that the status quo will only change if it is weakly preferred by all veto players, since otherwise one of the players would veto the social choice (Tsebelis, 1999;Tsebelis & Chang, 2004).…”