Martino Maggetti

• University of Lausanne

Le droit international marque aujourd’hui tous les domaines de l’activité humaine, y compris nos déplacements en transports publics, l’école de nos enfants, la sécurité de nos données ou les prestations de santé que nous recevons. Bien qu’il exerce une influence croissante sur les systèmes juridiques nationaux et que la légitimité de son expansion...

An emerging issue in AI alignment is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by public authorities, and specifically the integration of algorithmic decision-making (ADM) into core state functions. In this context, the alignment of AI with the values related to the notions of trust and trustworthiness constitutes a particularly sensitive problem fro...

Making human rights a reality requires that various types of domestic actors take measures, which is very demanding, all the more so in federal systems. Based on a comparative case study of Swiss cantons, we argue that an important part of the game is played at the subnational level, and not following a top-down trajectory, but with repeated back a...

This chapter offers a synthesis of the arguments outlined in this book and discusses the main findings from the empirical study of the Swiss case. It appears that international law obligations do not impact the national level following a descending trajectory. Rather, they provide opportunities and constraints to a core group of subnational actors...

After being signed by a state, international human rights treaties must be formally ratified and then implemented. What happens before and during the ratification may influence the future uses of—and engagements with—human rights treaties and different mechanisms are employed to try to spur engagement and implementation. Through case studies of the...

This book examines how subnational actors use international human rights treaties and how subnational political authorities, including subnational legislators, come to engage with international treaties. In this chapter, we present our empirical approach, our research design, methods and data. We outline how we combine top-down and bottom-up perspe...

In this chapter, we examine the varieties of how actors use international human rights treaties in policy processes at the subnational level. As explained in Chapters 1 and 2 , our case studies are the Istanbul Convention (IC) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in Swiss cantons. Here, we identify the most relevant...

Engagement with human rights treaties occurs when the political authorities of a subnational unit try to understand an international treaty and intend to take policy measures to deal with it with a view to its (further) implementation. Our results indicate that there are three different ways in which political authorities engage with treaties: impl...

Subnational entities in federal states typically retain a degree of sovereignty and enjoy leeway in implementation, raising questions such as whether—and how—international law is actually implemented at the subnational level. This article sheds light on these questions, using two contrasted case studies in Switzerland: The Istanbul Convention on do...

Different streams of political research have pointed to two macro‐phenomena that appear as opposite at first glance: On the one hand, the increasing delegation of competencies to jurisdictions beyond the central government, resulting in the denationalization of political authority. On the other, the passing of reforms that reassert the centre of th...

Research on policy integration has become an important part of public policy scholarship by analyzing how policymakers create linkages between policy subsystems to deal with complex policy problems. To develop this research program further, it is crucial to know how policy integration relates to broader theoretical and methodological developments i...

In Switzerland, the federal government reacted quite effectively in the main critical junctures of the pandemic crisis, especially in the first phase of the pandemic. An experimentalist approach had been applied to cope with a situation of high uncertainty, according to which public authorities have been able to learn and readapt their strategy alo...

This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marke...

International institutions frequently set rules, standards or policies that affect stakeholders who did not have an actual say in their making. Think of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision whose standards, set by a small group of states, have been adopted in over a hundred jurisdictions. Historically, the interests of developing countries an...

International institutions frequently set rules, standards or policies that affect stakeholders who did not have an actual say in their making. Think of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision whose standards, set by a small group of states, have been adopted in over a hundred jurisdictions. Historically, the interests of developing countries an...

International institutions frequently set rules, standards or policies that affect stakeholders who did not have an actual say in their making. Think of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision whose standards, set by a small group of states, have been adopted in over a hundred jurisdictions. Historically, the interests of developing countries an...

International institutions frequently set rules, standards or policies that affect stakeholders who did not have an actual say in their making. Think of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision whose standards, set by a small group of states, have been adopted in over a hundred jurisdictions. Historically, the interests of developing countries an...

International institutions frequently set rules, standards or policies that affect stakeholders who did not have an actual say in their making. Think of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision whose standards, set by a small group of states, have been adopted in over a hundred jurisdictions. Historically, the interests of developing countries an...

European regulatory networks are increasingly becoming crucial venues for European governance. They typically emerged as relatively loose groups of national authorities in charge of meta-regulating sectoral policies. However, in the medium term, they experienced dissimilar developmental patterns. On the one hand, some networks (such as the Committe...

The influence of the European Union on national power structures, actors' institutional opportunities, and governance networks is well established in cases of Europeanization processes unfolding in member states or associated countries for which a formal agreement is in place. This article focuses instead on Europeanization processes that are more...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed differences in the capacity of governments around the world to integrate and coordinate different policy instruments into a coherent response. In this article, we conceptualize and empirically examine policy integration in responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 35 countries. We then discuss how the interplay between r...

The coronavirus disease pandemic has exposed differences in the capacity of governments around the world to integrate and coordinate different policy instruments into a coherent response. In this article, we conceptualize and empirically examine policy integration in responses to the coronavirus disease crisis in 35 countries. We then discuss how t...

In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The...

Researchers have argued that political parties in government matter for policy integration reforms, but the way they do so remains somewhat undetermined. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by tackling two interrelated open questions: How does the presence of different political parties in government, which rely on policy programs on op...

This chapter focuses on mixed-method designs, an increasingly popular approach to designing research in the social sciences that is used to combine the respective advantages of qualitative and quantitative analytical procedures and to strengthen the empirical analysis. After the introduction, two general principles of mixed designs are discussed, t...

In the wake of the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the Swedish and Swiss governments adopted a similar policy approach. They enacted mostly non-binding measures to contain the epidemic, relying on the high level of interpersonal trust and trust in political institutions that exist in both of these (broadly comparable) countries to ensure complianc...

In 2017, an international consortium of public administration and political science scholars sent out a survey to the leaders of quasi-autonomous public agencies in seven countries (Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK). 10 Lessons: 1. Coordination and steering also work through the perceptions of those who are coordi...

This deliverable offers a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature on trust and regulation and their relations in three parts. Section 1 provides a brief overview of trust and distrust; their relationship; and antecedents (drivers) and positive and negative consequences. This second part of provides an overview of phases and processes...

The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top-down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the m...

The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the m...

In this article, we explore the determinants of reforms intending to integrate policies and coordinate administrative units by focusing on necessary conditions. Firstly, we elaborate theoretical expectations about potential necessary conditions for cross-sectoral reforms. Secondly, we conduct a condition-oriented fuzzy-set qualitative comparative a...

This introduction to our special issue discusses the challenges related to the cooperative and competitive interaction between national regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies within increasingly complex EU regulatory regimes. In this context , a special attention is given to the dynamic nature of multilevel processes. After presenti...

During the last decades, scholars have pointed to a process of “denationalization”, i.e., the delegation of competencies away from the center of the nation state – upwards, downwards, and sideward. At the same time, a transformation of the central state has been observed, which aims at strengthening its steering capacity by means of integrating sec...

Some EU agencies have been recently entrusted with enforcement powers, which imply a crucial extension of their regulatory reach. However, other comparable agencies did not receive such powers. This paper explores the case of energy regulation as an instance of these “negative” cases, and suggests that the lack of enforcement powers may have been p...

This report serves as a complementary study to the National Research Program 70 “Energy Turnaround” and 71 “Managing Energy Consumption”. The relationship with the European Union (EU) in the field of energy is analyzed, looking at the impact on the Swiss energy system and the energy transition, in three separate modules. The first is based on semi-...

The study of multilevel governance ( MLG ) is fundamentally concerned with the capacity of MLG to effectively deal with policy problems. However, the notion of problem‐solving itself remains vague. Moreover, MLG research prioritizes questions of structure and agency, while neglecting the role and nature of policy problems themselves. This symposium...

The European Union (EU) is currently facing unprecedented challenges to its problem‐solving capacity, such as those represented by pressing transnational crises and by bottom‐up criticisms towards the European integration process. Moreover, the EU is said to compensate its weak input legitimacy with an enhanced problem‐solving capacity. However, th...

In this article, we suggest that the governance of problems shapes the institutional dynamics of multi‐level governance (MLG) polities. MLG arrangements – processes and institutions that enable policymaking across different jurisdictional levels wherein both public authorities and non‐state actors are involved – can or cannot succeed in solving pol...

This article undertakes a systematic comparative review of research on policy coordination and integration. Specifically, we compare studies focusing on "policy integration" with those using "joined-up-government" or "whole-of-government" as key analytical concepts. We discuss differences and similarities between the two groups in terms of empirica...

Brazil has traditionally been one of the only major economies never to have committed to an international investment agreement, an area of global policy dominated by a specific type of agreement, the Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). This country changed its traditional stance only recently, due in particular to the interest of domestic stakeho...

According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the govern...

Contemporary theories of the policy process typically assume that policy responses tend to go through long periods of stasis alternated with occasional bursts of intense activity. The concept of policy punctuations has been put forward to denote large-scale changes in public policies that take place in crisis moments. However, research on the dynam...

Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly questioned the democraticness and the authority of transnational multi-stakeholder organizations, especially those that regulate the internet. To contribute to this discussion, we studied the “democratic anchorages” and the regulatory authority of 23 internet regulators. In particular, we conducted a fuzzy...

This chapter offers a selective critical review of studies on regulatory regimes in member states and at the EU level, especially regarding the most recent advancements on multi-level regulatory regimes, accountability, and legitimacy. We will briefly examine theoretical work dealing with the conceptualization of such regimes, and compare and contr...

Recent years have witnessed a host of innovations for conducting research with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Concurrently, important issues surrounding its uses have been highlighted. In this paper, we seek to help users design QCA studies. We argue that establishing inference with QCA involves three intertwined design components: first,...

This article compares the role of regulatory intermediaries in the governance of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in Australia and Switzerland. We argue that the creation, selection, and activation of specific intermediaries depend on the organizational capacity of the regulator and on the capture potential of the target. To limit the risk of ca...

The goal of this contribution is to discuss the application of the principal–agent framework to the study of interactions between elected politicians – the principal – and independent regulatory agencies – the agent. Through a review of recent research we suggest that the principal–agent framework, despite its parsimony and analytical leverage, req...

Given the increasing popularity of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) for the study of public policy and policy processes, this article offers a review of two key issues: multiple configurational causality and temporality. On the one hand, the study of multiple configurational causal relations allows researchers to deal with the extremely compl...

This contribution introduces our symposium by highlighting four distinctive aspects of transnational governance from a bureaucratic politics perspective: the emergence of transnational institutions, their functioning, their impact on the domestic level, and the diffusion of regulatory standards. The general argument is that many accounts of transna...

We have witnessed a rise of hybrid regulators in transnational governance, and the regimes they form have grown in number, complexity, and importance. They are directly involved in rule making, provide crucial information, and conduct supportive tasks, such as arbitration, certification, or mobilisation, to other rule makers. In our paper, we exami...

A growing literature in public policy, comparative politics and international relations has studied how the policies of one unit (e.g. country, federal state or city) are influenced by the policies of other units - that is, how policies diffuse. This article provides a meta-analysis of 114 studies, demonstrating persisting inconsistencies in the me...

‘Hard’ governance in the EU is operated through rules that arise from treaties, directives and regulations, while ‘soft’ governance involves the use of non-binding rules that are nevertheless expected to produce effects in practice (Trubek et al., 2005). Using Hooghe and Marks’ terminology hard governance relies on the ‘type one’ institutional arch...

In recent years, the fight against money laundering has emerged as a key issue of financial regulation. The Wolfsberg Group is an important multistakeholder agreement establishing corporate responsibility (CR) principles against money laundering in a domain where international coordination remains otherwise difficult. The fact that 10 out of the 25...

European regulatory networks (ERNs) are in charge of producing and disseminating non-bindings standards, guidelines and recommendations in a number of important domains, such as banking and finance, electricity and gas, telecommunications, and competition regulation. The goal of these soft rules is to promote ‘best practices’, achieve co-ordination...

Since independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) became key actors in European regulatory governance in the 1990s, a significant share of policy-making has been carried out by organizations that are neither democratically elected nor directly accountable to elected politicians. In this context, public communication plays an important role. On the one h...

This article first provides a selective overview of the literature on bureaucratic autonomy and identifies different approaches to this topic. The second section discusses three major sets of open questions, which will be tackled in the contributions to this special issue: the subjective, dynamic and relational nature of autonomy; the complex linka...

This article examines institutional change in a case that was expected to be particularly resilient but showed considerable structural transformation: the institutionalization of the regulatory state in Switzerland. This process is illustrated through the establishment of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in four areas: banking and finance; te...

Institutional change and the evolution of the regulatory state: evidence from the Swiss case This article examines institutional change in a case that was expected to be particularly resilient but showed considerable structural transformation: the institutionalization of the regulatory state in Switzerland. This process is illustrated through the e...

Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and ways forward This article first provides a selective overview of the literature on bureaucratic autonomy and identifies different approaches to this topic. The second section discusses three major sets of open questions, which will be tackled in the contributions to this special...

Networks are considered increasingly important for policy-making. The literature on new modes of governance in Europe suggests that their horizontal coordination capacity and flexible and informal structures are particularly suitable for governing the multilevel architecture of the European polity. However, empirical evidence about the effects of n...

Networks famously epitomize the shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ as governing structures for exercising control and coordination besides hierarchies and markets. Their distinctive features are their horizontality, the interdependence among member actors and an interactive decision-making style. Networks are expected to increase the problem-s...

Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) were created in various sectors and on different governmental levels to implement liberalization policies. This paper investigates the link between IRAs' independence, which is said to promote regulatory credibility and the use of technical expertise, and their accountability, which is related to the need for...

Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) are increasingly attracting academic and societal attention, as they represent the institutional cornerstone of the regulatory state and play a key role in policy-making. Besides the expected benefits in terms of credibility and efficiency, these regulators are said to bring about a ‘democratic deficit’, follo...

The question of interdependence is a crucial problem of the comparative method, which is particularly relevant for the comparison of subnational public policies. The phenomena to be compared, instead of consisting of independent analytical units, are likely to influence each other. This contribution reviews existing approaches to examine interdepen...

Research on regulation has crossed paths with the literature on policy instruments, showing that regulatory policy instruments contain cognitive and normative beliefs about policy. Thus, their usage stacks the deck in favor of one type of actor or one type of regulatory solution. In this article, we challenge the assumption that there is a predeter...

This book develops and applies an inventive theoretical approach to the comparative study of the neglected aspect of the real (or "de facto") independence of regulatory agencies. The book begins with an examination of the organisational and institutional factors shaping the de facto independence of regulatory agencies in Western Europe. There follo...

The wave of liberalization of the last thirty years has implied a shift in states' functions from direct interventionism in the economy to stronger public supervision and regulation of markets. This chapter shows how this general trend has taken place in Switzerland. A comparison of different economic sectors – telecom and electricity, banking and...

European regulatory networks (ERNs) constitute the main governance instrument for the informal co-ordination of public regulation at the European Union (EU) level. They are in charge of co-ordinating national regulators and ensuring the implementation of harmonized regulatory policies across the EU, while also offering sector-specific expertise to...

Unabhängige Regulierungsbehörden sind in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu einem wichtigen Faktor in der Politik geworden. Seit der Finanzkrise sind Regulierer wie die Schweizer Finma auch der breiteren Öffentlichkeit bekannt. Sie verfügen über zahlreiche Kompetenzen und hohe Autonomie. Mit ihrer Unabhängigkeit von der Politik wurde mehr Glaubwürdigkeit u...

This chapter offers a theoretical and empirical assessment of the distinctive feature of regulatory agencies, namely their independence. First, we discuss the formal and informal aspects of regulatory independence, their conceptualization, and their operationalization. Second, we present empirical research explaining the variation of formal indepen...

This article examines the role of formally independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in policy-making, focusing on six cases concerning the revision of crucial laws related to the competencies of the investigated IRA. These cases were selected from three small European countries (the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland) and two policy areas (finance and...

The recent establishment of European networks of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) follows, in principle, a double process of delegation of public authority: from member state governments to national regulators, and from national regulators to European networks. Following this development, a number of questions emerge, concerning the effect of...

The phenomenon of delegating public authority from elected politicians (or ministries headed by elected politicians) to formally independent regulatory agencies (RAs) is becoming increasingly widespread. This paper examines the relation between formal independence, as prescribed in the constitutions of agencies, and de facto independence. Toward th...

Since the early 1990s, independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) have become key actors in the governance of many policy domains across Europe and beyond. Following the privatization of former state-owned enterprises and the liberalization of markets, regulation has become a key public policy, whose responsibility has in many cases been delegated to t...

Paper prepared for the 3rd ECPR Conference, Section (3) -Regulation in the Age of Governance, Panel (3.5) -Regulatory Agencies: Institutional and Actors Centred Approaches, Budapest, 8-10 September 2005. Abstract Following the development of recent empirical research, we now know a bit more regarding the diffusion of independent regulatory agencies...

Two main functional (and normative) rationales drive the delegation of power from governments to formally independent regulatory agencies (IRAs): an increase in policy credibility (through independence), and enhancement of decision-making efficiency (through expertise) (Majone 2001). However, the two goals are expected to be incompatible, because t...

Political decision-makers, when delegating competencies to independent regulatory agencies (IRAs), are always concerned by the following dilemma: independence must be effective so as to improve the credibility of the agency and foster the quality of regulatory outputs; but it should not consent an uncontrolled self-government of agencies, in order...

Abstract will be provided by author.

Recent research focused on transnational networks as the cornerstone of a “new world order”, wherein different political actors interact to respond to the challenges of interdependence, which concern numerous cross-border issues. According to this argument, global governance is crucially shaped by transnational interactions that are organized in a...