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Black, Julia --- "Tomorrow’s Worlds: Frameworks for Understanding Regulatory Innovation" [2005] ELECD 358; in Black, Julia; Lodge, Martin; Thatcher, Mark (eds), "Regulatory Innovation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Regulatory Innovation

Editor(s): Black, Julia; Lodge, Martin; Thatcher, Mark

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422844

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Tomorrow’s Worlds: Frameworks for Understanding Regulatory Innovation

Author(s): Black, Julia

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

2. Tomorrow's worlds: frameworks for
understanding regulatory innovation
Julia Black

INTRODUCTION
The first chapter explored what `regulatory innovation' consists of; the more
difficult questions are how and why does it occur. This is clearly not the first
time these questions have been asked, and the explanations and theories range
from the particular personality characteristics of individual innovators to the
macro-economic measures and political structures of states, from communica-
tion networks to models of rationality and actorhood, from institutional struc-
tures to ideational properties.
The different sets of explanations tend, however, to occupy different
`worlds', and intellectual travel between them is often limited. These `worlds'
are, of course, analytical and often disciplinary constructs. They are delineated
here to be used in part as heuristic devices to map a path through conflicting
and yet often overlapping debates on innovation. They are not mutually exclu-
sive, nor are they necessarily internally coherent, rather the boundaries
between them are fluid and as the chapters in this volume will suggest, expla-
nations for regulatory innovation may resonate with one or more aspects of
different `worlds', and competing images of regulatory innovation cut across
them. Nonetheless, a `world' is a site of analysis, each focusing on different
actors, mechanisms, levels of analysis and methodologies, combining to
produce somewhat differing answers to the questions of how and why inno-
vations are introduced. The outline given of each world is not intended to be a
complete account of the theories of innovation that may potentially exist ...