In the past decades, independent regulatory agencies have come to play a key role in the enforcement of regulatory policies. The organizations exercise their authority at arm’s length of politics and the electoral process, which would enhance both the credibility of regulatory policies and the expert knowledge incorporated into regulatory decisions. Yet, the insulation of regulatory agencies has also raised questions of democratic legitimacy and accountability.
As the organizations are exempted from ministerial involvement in the decision-making process, and from the accountability mechanisms inherent in the ministerial hierarchy, they may face more opportunities to shirk and to use their political power arbitrarily than do ministerial departments. To address the potential ‘democratic deficit’ of independent regulatory agencies, politicians incorporate various provisions for political accountability – that is, accountability to government and parliament – into the statutes of the organizations. Independent regulatory agencies are, for instance, obliged to provide information upon request, to submit their annual budget and annual report to politicians, and to attend parliamentary hearings. The proposed paper focuses on the provisions for political accountability that are introduced in the statutes of independent regulatory agencies operating in 24 advanced democracies and in seven sectors. The degree to which these organizations are subject to provisions for political accountability varies considerably from one country to the other, and from one sector to the other. The study therefore takes a comparative perspective, and addresses three related questions. First, what accountability provisions are incorporated into the statutes that govern independent regulatory agencies? Second, what variation in accountability can we observe? And third, how can we explain the variation in degrees of accountability of independent regulatory agencies?
