| This dissertation examines the current use of, and potential for, new governance-style structures in securities regulation in the United States and Canada. It is among the first to examine securities regulation from a new governance perspective. The two main subjects of the dissertation --- the "reform undertaking," or monitorship; and more principles-based securities regulation --- respond in particular to the difficult problems of corporate compliance, corporate ethical culture, and limited regulatory capacity.;New governance scholarship emphasizes the importance of pragmatic, decentralized, dynamic, leaning-by-doing structures, based on broad participatory dialogue, in developing more effective methods for problem-solving. Taken as a whole, this dissertation offers a review of both the potential significance of new governance methods for difficult problems in securities regulation, and also the distance between theory and effective implementation. The first two chapters offer mostly theoretical proposals for responding to the problems of corporate culture and industry complexity, and are cautiously optimistic about the potential of monitorships and principles-based regulation as strategies. The third chapter and the appendix (a co-authored piece that is not formally part of the dissertation) are devoted to understanding the reasons why actual practice seems to have fallen short of theory. The latter two are not accounts of the failure of new governance approaches to operate as intended. Rather, they focus on the failure by securities regulators (and the reasons for failure) in implementing new governance initiatives in a serious way.;This dissertation is a snapshot of the imperfect reception of new governance ideas by regulators who, on their surface, seemed to have been well-suited to working with them. The successes and failures of these initiatives are specific to this context. However, there are lessons to be drawn for new governance scholarship generally concerning the difficulty of building in adequate capacity, of ensuring a truly participatory dialogic process, and of generating effective structures that will systematize regulatory learning. The dissertation emphasizes the importance of understanding the particular historical, philosophical, and structural contexts under which any regulator operates, and the ways in which they will influence, and even call for customization of, new governance methods. |
