Through ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’ Fisher, Elizabeth
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Administrative Law,
12/2020
Book Chapter
While the lack of comparative administrative law scholarship and intellectual interchange across jurisdictions is often noted, comparative regulatory study is a thriving analytical enterprise. This ...chapter considers the relationship between these two fields of scholarly endeavour to show the interaction between them is a complex and nuanced one. Three issues are highlighted. First, there is a significant overlap between administrative law and regulatory studies. Second, comparative scholarship about administrative law and regulation is being carried on for many different reasons and in many different ways. Third, a more meaningful distinction to draw than between administrative law and regulatory studies, is between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ accounts of regulation and administrative law. A thin comparative account tends to prevail in regulatory studies, reflecting the dominance of thin policy discourses. In contrast, comparative administrative law scholarship tends towards providing thicker accounts, reflecting the general thickness of legal discourse. But these are only tendencies. More importantly, thin and thick accounts have their strengths and weaknesses, and are also interdependent on each other.
