Toward a New Theory of Regulation: Program

Two Days of Interdisciplinary Conversation.

Sixty leading scholars will gather February 1-3, 2008, at The Conference & Residency Center at White Oak, on the St. Mary’s River north of Jacksonville, Florida. We are inviting political scientists and economists, historians and sociologists, legal scholars and academics from schools of business and public policy, all of whom possess expertise about the regulatory dynamics of modern capitalism.

The unique setting will facilitate a primary goal for the conference: to begin a process of community building among academics interested in rethinking the theory and practice of economic regulation, across disciplines and across the generations.

Key Themes

Regulatory Purpose
What values and objectives should guide government officials as they identify contexts that require regulatory responses? In those cases in which officials accept the need for regulation, how should these same values guide their choices among the many regulatory tools at their disposal? And how should they strike the balance between the pursuit of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, goals (e.g., economic efficiency, justice, etc.)? What can contemporary American regulators and policymakers learn from crucial regulatory experiences and traditions in the American past, or in the European or Asian present?

Appraisal of Deregulation
What has “economic deregulation” actually meant over the past two generations of American policy-making (e.g., bureaucratic downsizing, privatization, self-regulation, etc.)? What have been the chief successes and failures of deregulation? And what arenas most cry out for new regulatory initiatives or, alternatively, for further deregulation?

Optimal Conditions for Government Action
Given the objectives identified in Session I, under what conditions is government activism most or least likely to achieve such aspirations? How can academics and policymakers draw on the best insights and contributions of “public choice” and “public interest” theorists, while still maintaining a healthy regard for public purpose and a sensible appraisal of public capacity?

Regulatory Decision-Making
How should policy-makers assess the “success” or “failure” of general regulatory frameworks and particular regulatory schemes? Should policy-makers pursue an explicit method of cost-benefit analysis? If so, what method should they adopt, and in what regulatory domains? If not, what other methods should they prefer?

Globalization’s Effect on Regulation
How has the process of globalization changed the regulatory environment? Can we identify instructive instances of recent experiments with cross-border regulation, whether by nongovernmental groups or international institutions? To what extent do American regulators and policy-makers need to begin thinking about developing new frameworks for global mechanisms of regulation?