MA Thesis Defense: Aslı Unan (Political Science)
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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Master of Arts Thesis Defense of Aslı Unan (Political Science).
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON REGULATORY INDEPENDENCE
Keywords: Regulatory independence, independent regulatory agencies, measurement
Often related to market liberalization, many countries, if not all, established independent regulatory agencies during the last decades and many of them have created fairly large numbers of agencies in various sectors. Although the regulatory governance model has been mostly standardized in the current administrative world with the establishment and diffusion of independent regulatory agencies (Levi-Faur et al., 2011), the boundaries between the government and regulatory agencies varied across countries and across time (Vibert, 2007). This research explores the variation in the degree of independence of regulatory agencies across countries and time by measuring regulatory independence in telecommunication sector
of 36 middle income countries. It looks into economic, political and market-based indicators as explanatory factors of the variation in the degree of independence. Cross-national results indicate that the freedom in political rights, democracy level and investment freedom have a positive correlation with the agency independence whereas state ownership in sector affects independence negatively. Cross-temporal analysis, looking at four countries’ formal independence mechanisms from 2006 to 2016, has demonstrated that formal independence cannot be preserved as once and for all. Following political and economic uncertainties, governments who were willing to delegate authority to independent regulators may undermine not only de facto, but also formal independence of agencies over time through means of budget control, dispossession of competences and autonomy loss in decision making. Dedication to EU regulatory framework plays a role in governments’ behavior to preserve regulatory independence.
Thesis Jury:
- Assoc. Prof. Işık Özel (Thesis advisor)
- Assist. Prof. Özge Kemahlıoğlu
- Assoc. Prof. Tolga Bölükbaşı (Bilkent University, Political Science)
Date & Time : August 5, 2016 & 15:30
Place: Sabancı University, FASS 2034