ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) represents an excellent case to examine the practice and test the explanatory leverage of Regulatory Governance (RG). Regulation is a set of “rules issued for the purpose of controlling the manner in which private and public enterprises conduct their operations” (Majone, 1989, p. 9). More precisely, in public policy this control is assumed to be exerted by public agencies (Selznick, 1985, pp. 363–364) mandated by legislative or executive branches, but relatively independent from both of them (Majone, 2002). Regulation first appeared in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, and is widespread in European countries as well as in EU governance. The term “governance” is more recent: in the European context, governance is increasingly a function of intensified cooperation of EU member states with non-state actors, international or supranational organizations (particularly, the EU) taking place under the aegis of informality, complementarity or shared sovereignty (thus, outside the traditional executive-legislative government scheme) (Rosenau, 1992).
