The Rise of the Regulatory Society

Abstract

Regulation has been a feature at least of urban if not of all societies in a limited degree. The quality and price of products and standards of craftsmanship were regulated by the guilds in medieval England and the quality of German beer has been regulated since that time. It is only in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, that regulation has become a substantial and proliferating feature. The rise of regulation and the reasons for it can be understood by conceptualising developments in three broad phases, though just as regulation predated all of them in limited degree, so the boundaries between them must not be identified in hard and fast terms.