Reforming National Regulatory Institutions: the EU and Cross-National Variety in European Network Industries

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Abstract Regulatory institutions offer a powerful means to coordinate firms with other actors, notably state actors, and hence create institutional advantages. Until the mid-1980s, changes in institutions for the regulation of network industries such as telecommunications, energy and transport followed the predictions of the Varieties of capitalism model. Thus, Britain privatised and liberalised, France followed a grands projets strategy, and Germany one of close links between public suppliers and private equipment manufacturers and consensus among social partners. However, from the mid-1980s onwards, the EU has developed an increasingly detailed regulatory framework that is based on a ‘liberal market economy’ model of regulatory institutions and runs counter to other coordinated or state-led models. It has played an important part in reforms in France and Germany that reshaped formal regulatory institutions in ways similar to those in Britain, notably liberalisation, privatization, an

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