A Systems Theory Approach to Responsive Regulation

By Susan Sturm, Professor of Law and Social Responsibility, Columbia Law School

Responsive Regulation is one of the most important and influential contributions to the field of regulation; it has reshaped the way scholars approach regulatory design. Taking its value and significance as a starting point, this talk will draw on field research and multi-disciplinary scholarship to identify a set of premises that limit responsive regulation’s traction as a framework for regulatory analysis and design. Responsive regulation focuses inquiry on individual-level motivations and decisions, and on the strategies used by individual regulators to influence those motivations and decisions. Its implicit assumptions do not take adequate account of the multi-level systems dynamics that produce and potentially change problematic conditions and practices. I will argue that Responsive Regulation is too narrow, in its emphasis on using regulatory strategy to influence behavior of individual actors, and too broad, in its recommendation that individual regulatory actors become full-service interveners, each striving to move up, down and across the capacity building and regulatory pyramid. The talk will also offer the outlines of an approach that is rooted in multi-level systems analysis and focuses regulatory design on critical questions affecting the efficacy of public and private interventions. I will suggest that regulators should develop the capacity to apply a multi-level, systems theory of institutional change.