An Enforcement Taxonomy of Regulatory Agencies

A variety of multivariate techniques were used to develop a taxonomy of regulatory agencies from the first comprehensive study of the disparate enforcement strategies employed by business regulatory agencies in one country. Seven types of agencies were identified: Conciliators, Benign Big Guns, Diagnostic Inspectorates, Detached Token Enforcers, Detached Modest Enforcers, Token Enforcers and Modest Enforcers. Agencies were distinguished primarily according to their orientation to enforcement versus persuasion, according to their commitment to detached (or arms length) command and control regulation versus cooperative fostering of self-regulation, and according to their attachment to universalistic rulebook regulation versus particularistic regulation. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to view regulatory agencies as lying on a single continuum from particularistic non-enforcers who engage in cooperative fostering of self-regulation to rulebook enforcers whose policy is detached command and control. This approximates the suggestions of Hawkins and Reiss for distinguishing regulatory agencies according to a “sanctioning/deterrence” versus “compliance” dimension. The predominant regulatory style in Australia, however, is distant from both poles, being a perfunctory regulatory approach which is neither distinctively diagnostic and educative nor litigiously “going by the book”; rather it amounts to “going through the motions”. The typology also partially conforms to Black's categorisation of social control as penal, therapeutic, conciliatory and compensatory.