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The Paradox of Regulation: What Regulation Can Achieve and What It Cannot

2013; Oxford University Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/medlaw/fwt001

1464-3790

Judith Healy,

Regulation and Compliance Studies

Faced with successive and devastating crises, such as floods, fires, and financial collapses, the public response is to urge governments to do something to prevent it happening again. Even champions of de-regulation admit a role for governments in devising regulatory strategies for preventing or controlling catastrophic risks to people, property, and the environment. But, in the lull between crises, demands to avert risk are succeeded by demands to lighten the regulatory burden; as evident with the UK Better Regulation Commission and the Australian Government Department of Finance and Deregulation. Fiona Haines discusses this paradox of regulation (its conflicting imperatives), and looks for regulatory lessons from three crises in Australia. Her case studies are the industrial explosion in 1998 at the Longford Gas Plant in Gippsland, Victoria, the collapse of the HIH group of insurance companies in August 2001 (one of Australia's biggest corporate collapses), and the reaction of Australian aviation security to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the New York Twin Towers. Each of these events had a high political profile and resulted in major reforms to regulatory regimes. This book examines the ensuing regulatory responses; how was the risk of future harm perceived and what regulatory actors and activities were put in place? In particular, Haines examines the legal strategies that governments put in place in response to these three crises. The study also involved an empirical element of extensive interviews with key people associated with each of the events, a review of the associated public and legal documents and media reports, as well as an analysis of the academic literature. Haines devotes a chapter to the regulatory response to each of these three events while other chapters discuss the nature of risk and regulatory theory and practice.