Legitimacy, accountability and polycentric regulation: dilemmas, trilemmas and organisational response

Abstract

Introduction It has been said that governments can ‘puzzle as well as power’. Shamelessly misappropriating this comment, it could be said that academic papers can do the same. Some puzzle their way through an issue, raising more questions than they answer; others ‘power’ on through, setting out the path that others must follow to find a solution to whatever problem is being addressed. This chapter is of the former type. The issue that it considers is that of the accountability and legitimacy of decentred regulatory regimes. Decentred regulatory regimes are those in which the state is not the sole locus of authority or indeed in which it plays no role at all. They are marked by fragmentation, complexity and interdependence between actors, in which state and non-state actors are both regulators and regulated and their boundaries are marked by the issues or problems with which they are concerned, rather than necessarily by a common solution. Such regimes pose a number of challenges which writers across a range of disciplines – law, political science, international relations, development studies – are all engaged in delineating and addressing. Indeed, the issues to which the ‘governance turn’ is giving rise is drawing commentators like moths round a light. These challenges include the functional, the systemic, the democratic and the normative. Functional challenges revolve around the problem of coordination: networks of organisations within a regulatory regime are characterised by complex interdependencies and can lack a central locus of authority.

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