This book provides a comprehensive understanding of how, and under which conditions, regulators in the social sectors are able to influence political agendas and issue definitions. In these political processes, agencies may become the policy entrepreneurs which are able to prioritize issues, placing them in the political agenda and influencing policy formulations. These activities generate additional questions about the political role of regulatory agencies and post-delegation settings. Based on original source data and a mixed methods approach, the book shows that the diffusion of regulatory agencies is not only limited to regulatory responsibilities and to their increasing role in policy-making, but their influence has stretched over the agenda-setting phase but only under certain conditions. Moreover, the evolution of their strategies, the production and use of knowledge and the context in which they operate enable them to exert leverage on agendas. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of the politics of regulation, bureaucracy, agenda-setting, public policy, social problems and more broadly to European and comparative politics, and democracy.

Featuring a comprehensive analytical collection of interdisciplinary research on regulatory authorities, this innovative Handbook combines contributions from leading scholars and regulatory practitioners to present the fundamental theoretical concepts, empirical achievements and challenges in the contemporary study of regulatory authorities.

Setting the agenda on agenda setting, this Handbook explores how and why private matters become public issues and occasionally government priorities. It provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the perspectives, individuals, and institutions involved in setting the government’s agenda at subnational, national, and international levels. Drawing on contributions from leading academics across the world, this Handbook is split into five distinct parts. Part one sets public policy agenda setting in its historical context, devoting chapters to more in-depth studies of the main individual scholars and their works. Part two offers an extensive examination of the theoretical development, whilst part three provides a comprehensive look at the various institutional dimensions. Part four reviews the literature on sub-national, national and international governance levels. Finally, part five offers innovative coverage on agenda setting during crises.

This is the first book devoted to examining why some issues proposed by aggrieved individuals or groups are denied access to policy agendas. The book contains case studies that look at the policy process from the perspective of the strategies opponents often use to ensure agenda denial--strategies usually motivated by perceived threats to widely held world views and identities.

Legislatures are arguably the most important political institution in modern democracies. The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, written by some of the most distinguished legislative scholars in political science, provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description and critical assessment of the state of the art in this key area.

Why does the EU deal with some issues but not others? This is the central question of this book dedicated to agenda-setting processes in the EU. Through a comparison of EU and US policy agendas and the analysis of four case studies in environmental and health policy, this book offers a new understanding of how policy issues come onto the EU agenda.

This book explains how international financial law 'works' and presents an alternative theory for understanding its purpose, operation, and limitations. Drawing on a close institutional analysis of the post-crisis financial architecture, it argues that international financial law is often bolstered by a range of reputational, market, and institutional mechanisms that make it more coercive than classical theories of international law predict. As such, it is a powerful, though at times imperfect, tool of financial diplomacy. Expanded and revised, the second edition of Soft Law and the Global Financial System contains updated material as well as an extensive new chapter analyzing how international standards and best practices have been operationalized in the US and EU in the wake of the financial crisis. It remains an essential tool for understanding global soft law for political scientists, lawyers, economists, and students of financial statecraft.