Regulatory agencies and regulatory change: breaking out of the routine

From time to time regulators are required by new legislation to radically alter the normative basis of their decisions. Their ability to do so can, however, be undermined both by a lack of appropriate resources and the self-referential nature of regulatory systems. Some aids to adaptation already exist, but, as this paper demonstrates, these either take the forms of reactions to failure, or are inadequate to ensure certainty of result, as they are themselves reliant on the adoption of new norms of behaviour by regulatory agencies. We therefore propose a novel mechanism building on a proven research methodology to break out of this circularity in adaptation: a modifi ed form of Participatory Action Research embedded within regulatory systems.