What's the difference? Public, nonprofit, and private administration of U.S. organic food regulations

This dissertation examines the implications of a dramatic innovation in regulatory program design: competitive third-party administration. Under competitive third-party programs, the administration of regulatory standards is delegated to multiple independent organizations in competition for regulatee clients, giving rise to concerns regarding how such program designs might threaten regulatory program fidelity. For example, scholars question whether third-party organizations, particularly those from outside of the government sector, possess the requisite expertise to adequately monitor regulated activities and ensure regulatees' compliance. Others indicate that competition among diverse third-party administrators may threaten regulatory stringency if third-party administrators alter their regulatory behaviors to attract and retain regulatee clients.;The dissertation engages such concerns in the context of competitive third-party administration of U.S. organic food regulations, guided by the research question: How does organizational form (public, nonprofit, private) affect third-party organizations' administration of a regulatory program? The relationship between third-party administrator organizational form and three facets of regulatory administration are studied: third-party administrators' expertise, services, and regulatory approaches. The project follows a mixed-method research design, with empirical analyses drawing heavily from a national survey of certified organic producers (the regulatees in the organic food regulation context). Multivariate regression procedures are used to account for how perceptions of regulatory administration are influenced by both third-party administrator and survey respondent attributes. Survey data are complemented in the study of third-party administrator services through website coding. Supplementary data are extracted from a database of certified organic operations and nonprofit administrator IRS tax filings.;Dissertation findings indicate that organic food regulation third-party administrator organizational form is associated with two facets of regulatory administration---third-party administrators' expertise and the services third-party administrators perform. Few differences are found in public, nonprofit, and private third-party administrators' execution of regulatory functions. Taken collectively, these results offer an intriguing proposition for future research---that the conflicting incentives introduced by a competitive third-party design characterized by third-party organizational form diversity may be effectively resolved through adequate accreditation oversight. The primary contribution of the dissertation is thus a better understanding of how regulatory design innovations might hinder or promote regulatory program objectives. This research also offers insights for multiple disciplines within the field of public affairs, and a demonstration of the promise of using multiple theoretical perspectives in the study of contemporary public administration issues.