Fractal Responsiveness: Making Deals and Living with Constraints in Multi-Layered Regulatory Systems

By Carol Heimer, Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University

For the most part, those writing about responsive regulation focus their attention on a single level, though usually with acknowledgement of the existence of other layers. Here, with reference to the voluminous scholarship carried out and inspired by the Braithwaite team, we examine what responsive regulation means for street level bureaucrats, for regulatory agencies and those whom they regulate, and for policymakers. We examine the tradeoffs between flexibility and other ideals (such as universalism), concerns about gaming the system, effects of organizational and professional culture, relations between hard and soft law, and system constraints at a variety of levels. The objective is to see how responsiveness varies from one level to another and how the interdependence of levels shapes the overall system.