Does the organization of regulation condition institutional change? The case of the pharmaceutical sector in France and England.

Summary Change in economic regulation has traditionally been analyzed through the prism of agency theory, which opposes the rigidity of traditional bureaucratic schemes to the fluidity attributed to organizations that respond to the principles of new public management. Based on a comparison of changes in the regulation of the pharmaceutical market in France and in England, the article rejects this opposition, insisting on the temporalities of the reforms and on the power relations within the sectors to explain the pace and direction of change. During the 1990s and 2000s, the two countries took symmetrically divergent paths. First, a decentralized agency was created in England, while an interministerial administration was founded in France. These two entities are then affected by reforms that limit their capacity to intervene. We then show how past choices and the positioning of actors explain the requalification of these projects in the two cases studied, more than the dominant organizational traits in one country or the other.