The Regulatory Orthodoxy in Practice

This paper examines whether the OECD regulatory model corresponds with regulatory practice in Norway. It describes and analyzes whether civil servants in central agencies working with regulatory tasks differ from other civil servants when it comes to the importance of professional considerations and signals from their parent ministry and political executives, whether they have different contact patterns, and whether their assessment of the influence of political executives and their parent ministry varies. It also analyzes whether the variation in signals, contact patterns and perceived influence of different actors is sustained when structural and cultural features are taken into account. The empirical data base is a survey of civil servants in Norwegian central agencies conducted in 2006. One main finding is that regulatory practice is much more complex then the OECD model suggests. The most important factor for explaining the relationship between agencies and political and administrative superiors is the degree of political salience of the issues concerned