The Contexts of Regulation: The Impact Upon Health and Safety Inspectorates in Britain

It is argued that the systematic study of regulation should include an analysis of the structural contexts within which agencies with enforcement authority are embedded. At least four contexts affect indirectly and directly the process of regulation: the political, the economic, the scholarly and the media. The period of the mid‐ ‘eighties in Britain is characterized and trends in that period are described. The decline in resources, a political and scholarly environment of “de‐regulation” and increased media interests in aspects of regulation in general, it is argued, shape regulation in Great Britain. The authors use records, field and interview data from an on‐going research program on health and safety regulation in England and the structure and operations of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) at the Centre for Socio‐legal Studies, Oxford, to a) examine structural changes in the organization(s) of which the HSE is constituted b) identify stresses and conflicts within the HSE c) record resultant patterns of morale and performance and d) describe efforts at achieving rationalization and formalization. It is concluded that in the context of declining resources and pressures to appear efficient, potentially divisive stresses and conflicts in regulatory bodies, if the HSE is at all representative, will continue and will underlie changes and developments that can be expected to emerge.