Intermediaries in Regulatory Governance

Rule-makers and rule-takers often require various forms of assistance and outside resources to accomplish their goals.  To this end, they may engage with (or may be engaged by) diverse group of intermediaries, which subsequently act on their behalf or in conjunction with them to achieve their regulatory goals.  These intermediaries – their interests and functions, successes and failures – stand at the centre of our conceptualization of regulation and the regulatory process as a three-party game.  

Rule intermediaries can be private sector actors, such as for-profit accreditation agencies or accounting firms; civil society groups, such as NGOs with an interest in the issue at hand; or governmental bodies, such as administrative agencies or international organizations.  Even states can be intermediaries acting as go between other states and organizations, for example, with a mandate of the UN Security Council.  In principle, any actor – public or private, domestic or international – can act as a regulatory intermediary.  Intermediaries play varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation and building communities of assurances, trust and compliance.