The New Regulatory Space: Reframing Democratic Governance

In this lecture, Frank Vibert argues that, in order to understand the evolving patterns of governance in modern democratic societies, we need to assess these democracies not just in political terms, but in the context of the complex interplay of systems of social coordination — including the market, the law, regulation, and civil society. Of particular importance is the reliance on regulatory systems, in view of the fact that they are seen by some as ‘inferior’ and ‘crowding out’ other better systems, including democratic politics. He demonstrates why such views are mistaken. Instead, he argues that regulation has become the principal way to adjust relationships between different systems, as well as the predominant means by which we counter the adaptive bias toward the status quo in other systems.
Frank Vibert was a Senior Adviser at the World Bank before cofounding a London based Think Tank, the European Policy Forum in 1992. Since 2009 he has been a Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE. His previous books include The Rise of the Unelected (looking at the growing clout of expert and regulatory bodies) and Democracy and Dissent (examining international rule making institutions and practices).