Exploring the Ideological Foundations of the Regulatory State

The literature on the regulatory state is either agnostic or inconclusive
about the role of ideology as a determinant of delegation to independent
regulatory agencies. This paper puts forward a new theoretical argument,
claiming that the impact of government ideology is conditional on policy
areas. Drawing on a data set of 110 agency creations across seven policy
domains in 20 countries between 1980 and 2009, the analysis shows that
government ideology has a substantial impact on the establishment of
regulators, with right-wing governments more likely to set up economic
regulators and left-wing governments more likely to establish social
regulators. This finding fills an important gap in the literature on the
regulatory state and asserts the significance of political explanations in
studying the transformation of the public sector.