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Africa 2.0: Inside a continent’s communications revolution provides an important history of how two technologies – mobile calling and internet – were made available to millions of sub-Saharan Africans and the impact they have had on their lives. The book deals with the political challenges of liberalisation and privatisation that needed to be in place to get these technologies built. It analyses how the mobile phone fundamentally changed communications in sub-Saharan Africa and the ways Africans have made these technologies part of their lives. It examines critically the technologies’ impact on development practices and the key role development actors played in accelerating things like regulatory reform, fibre roll-out and mobile money. The book considers how corruption in the industry is a prism through which patronage relationships in government can be understood. The arrival of a start-up ecosystem has the potential to break these relationships and offer a new wave of investment opportunities. The author seeks to go beyond the hype to make a provisional assessment of the kinds of changes that have happened over three decades. It examines how and why these technologies became transformative and seem to have opened out a very different future for sub-Saharan Africa.
(Majone, 1994). Independent regulatory agencies emerged as a response to the problem of credibility of political regulatory institutions. The scenario for smooth regulatory reform was set. Reality took a different direction, however. Today, concerns about the quality of European rules and the role of independent regulators in the market are diffuse. So much so that regulatory quality has become one of the priorities of the competitiveness strategies of the Member States and institutions of the European Union (EU). In this book, we critically discuss the concept of
regulation’ raise some of the thorniest questions in political science. Quality for whom? In relation to what? And for what purposes? To clarify how we handle these questions, we chart the development of regulatory reform and regulatory governance in Europe and limit our analysis to better regulation. We then deal with the issue of how to measure the performance of better regulation policy. Having established that better regulation is a public policy, it can be appraised with the same conceptual and methodological tools used for other public policies. Indicators are a
communicative discourse surrounding New Labour’s foreign economic policy in government. The department most responsible for foreign economic policy was the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), subsequently replaced by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) in 2007 (incorporated into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2009). The chapter will also focus to a lesser extent on the Department for International Development (DfID) and the Treasury, both of which had some (formal or informal) involvement in foreign economic policy
of regulatory reforms following the financial crisis. After the discovery of the manipulation of benchmarks, in particular the LIBOR and the FX benchmarks, the G20 asked the FSB to undertake a ‘fundamental review of major interest rate benchmarks and plans for reform to ensure that those plans are consistent and coordinated and that interest rate benchmarks are robust and appropriately used by market participants’.2 The first step was taken in July 2013 with the establishment of an Official Sector Steering Group, consisting of senior officials from central banks
-quality regulation. Better regulation policy is essentially a type of meta-regulation. Its aim is to set rules that discipline the regulatory process, from formulation to enforcement, compliance and ex-post review of regulations. There are other components of regulatory reform that fall outside better regulation. The quality of regulatory institutions and regulations is determined by a vast array of factors. There is an interesting connection, though. In this volume, we look at three dimensions of better regulation policies, that is, design, activity and real-world outcome
the law, you should not indict or threaten to indict a company unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that some managerial agent of the company committed the alleged crime; and if 240 Regulatory reform you can prove that, why not indict the manager? And from the moral standpoint, punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility.3 It should be noted that ‘shareholders’ does not refer to a few wealthy individuals, but
while UNCTAD is currently recommending governments renegotiate their old treaties in order to incorporate sustainable development elements that would guarantee a good quality of foreign investment, OECD focuses on the quality of regulation in itself. OECD’s concept introduces the requirement for regulatory reform according to investor’s needs in order to facilitate the arrival
7 Regulatory governance, risk, and the new security economies Regulatory reform and risk management When asked to do something, anything, the first instinct of an elected official or policy-maker under pressure is often to propose a new rule or regulation. Whenever people want to attack bureaucracy, they cite incomprehensible, stupid, or ineffective regulations, the sheer cost of compliance, red tape, regulatory complexity – the lot. Faced with more risks, responding to more accidents and crises, and concerned not to be found negligent in the future, governments
Weberian model of bureaucracy, which is insulated from society and organised to maximise its efficiency. The developmental state thesis had a sustained and lasting impact, shaping the successive literature on Japan (Schaede 2000: 2). It was a watershed in the study of Japanese politics and had a significant impact on political science literature after the 1980s. As an example, Vogel (1996: 59) adapts Johnson to explore regulatory reforms in Japan and the UK, regarding the Japanese approach as the one pursuing better management of the sector; he employs an approach