The Global Retreat of the Regulatory State? The Populist Challenge and the Future of Regulatory Governance

The regulatory state is under severe stress. The rise of populism, at times with authoritarian tendencies, is challenging the very fundamentals of the regulatory state and regulatory governance. Populist leaders do not simply politicize and undermine regulatory governance, but they tend to transform the regulatory state. Despite the rich and ever-expanding debate about the impact of the populist ascent and democratic backsliding on public administration, bureaucracy, and public policy, research on the effect of populist rule on regulatory governance and the regulatory state is still scant. In this paper, we show how to address this gap and present two major contributions to guide future research agenda. First, we revisit the populist ascent and map out the current state of our (limited) knowledge. Second, we discuss five avenues scholars could follow in order to develop empirical and/or conceptual insights in order to better understand the transforming regulatory state: populist strategies for controlling regulatory agencies, the politics of regulatory design, market responses to regulatory instability, the role of transgovernmental networks and international constraints, and regulatory agency responses and adaptation to the populist ascent.