Regulatory Spaces and Interactions: An Introduction

This special issue draws together four contributions to debates about legal regulation.1They focus on space and interactions as key constituents of regulatory dynamics. The articles advance analysis of legal regulation also on the basis of new empirical data. Two contributions discuss novel forms of regulation, such as meta-regulation and the reform of health and safety regulation in Thailand. Two further articles examine the challenges faced by traditional state regulation through new tasks of systemic risk management, such as facilitating law and science interactions and ensuring animal disease control. The authors share a commitment to a range of fundamental values informing regulation, such as respect for animal welfare, the protection of the health and safety of workers, visions of justice which involve redistributive values and a concern with context-sensitive, proceduralized law which operates with a reflexive awareness of its own limitations. The first part of this introduction outlines space and interactions as key themes in the literature on legal regulation while the second part highlights the contribution of the articles in this area.