Regulatory regimes: the twilight zones between science and politics

This article develops a concept of regulatory regimes as institutional configurations structured around the management of risk through the systematic incorporation of scientific expertise into political decision-making. It situates the emergence of such regimes within the historical transformation associated with the rise of the regulatory state and argues that they institutionalise a distinctive form of authority—epistemic authority—through which expertise contributes not only to the implementation of regulatory objectives but also to their specification. Challenging the Weberian division of labour between facts and values, the article shows why the value-free ideal of science provides an inadequate account of expertise in policy-relevant contexts characterised by uncertainty and inductive risk. It then analyses indicators as paradigmatic instruments through which regulatory regimes structure expectations and behaviour across jurisdictions. The article concludes by identifying conditions under which expertise-based authority can be reconciled with legitimacy requirements in contemporary transnational risk governance.