An Ecological Approach to Regulatory Studies?

Abstract

Regulatory studies has been mainly occupied with addressing the social and economic crises of contemporary capitalism largely through instrumentally and responsively rational approaches. This paper asks how regulatory studies scholarship can better respond to the ecological crisis now facing our world and our governance systems alongside social and economic crises. Instrumentally rational regulatory approaches see human ecological impact as an externality or market failure. Socio legal approaches to regulatory studies challenged and developed the instrumentally rational approach by emphasizing the need to attend to the social and political aspects of regulation using a responsively rational approach. This paper proposes the need for a third big shift towards an ecologically rational approach to regulatory studies that better comprehends our embeddedness and interconnectedness within ecological systems. Our suggested approach is not alone in arguing for strong limits to be placed on ecologically damaging activity but an ecologically rational approach also calls for an understanding of how multiple, diverse ways of sustainable being can intersect with and challenge current regulatory regimes dominated by an instrumentally rational approach.

Keywords: regulatory studies, ecological impact

JEL Classification: K00, K39