The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyper-Innovation

Extract

The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyper-Innovation. By Michael Moran. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 256p. $65.00.

Drawing on experienced scholarly observation, Michael Moran has written a strikingly critical evaluation of Britain's recent development of state regulatory authority. Its now legalistic form more nearly resembles the long-prevalent American pattern. Perhaps the British development would seem to follow from the privatization of industries in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Enterprises like railroads, telecommunications, and electricity are no longer government corporations but privately owned “public utilities,” to use the American term for businesses especially affected by the public interest. For Moran, however, other forces also help account for the growth of regulation in Britain. He persuasively argues that legal regulatory authority has also been extended to several enterprises not previously nationalized and then privatized.