"Preface" [2005] ELECD 356; in Black, Julia; Lodge, Martin; Thatcher, Mark (eds), "Regulatory Innovation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: Regulatory Innovation

Editor(s): Black, Julia; Lodge, Martin; Thatcher, Mark

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422844

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 3

Extract:

Preface
Interdisciplinary work is much in demand from policy-makers and research
funding bodies alike. Understanding social phenomena is said to require a
move by the different sciences beyond their disciplinary silos and some of the
most significant breakthroughs in our knowledge and understanding occur at
the edges of disciplines. At the same time, individual career incentives usually
demand publications in each respective discipline's `top ten' journals, offering
a powerful counterweight to any attempt at working and publishing across
disciplines. One way to address these largely incompatible pressures is to seek
key concepts that appeal to a diversity of disciplines and attempt to establish
a structured environment for conversations and research around them.
Over the past four years, the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and
Regulation (CARR) has provided such an environment for a conversation
across disciplines on `regulatory innovation'. As with any innovation, this
book has gone through many iterations, with many avenues explored and
dismissed. Participants at various conferences and workshops will bear
witness to these various attempts to find a framework in which to understand
regulatory innovation, for example at the Socio-Legal Studies Association, the
Political Studies Association annual meetings in Britain, or seminars in
CARR, and we are grateful for the comments received on these various occa-
sions. We are also grateful to Tim Besley, a fellow member of CARR and LSE
colleague, for contributing to many of our conversations, and to Bronwen
Morgan and Karen Yeung, who generously participated in (endured!) a ...