About the project
The REGULATE project is a project running from 2022 to 2025. It is led by Kai Wegrich (Hertie School) and Eliska Drapalova, PhD postdoctoral researcher at Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
The project is funded by the DFG (WE 5352/2-1)
Objectives
The project addresses the knowledge and data gap surrounding European subnational regulation of the platform economy. We want to understand how have states and cities adapted to the platform economy’s rise and how have these new regulatory challenges changed political and institutional regimes, and their normative foundations. This research project combines political economy literature, multi-level governance and regulation theories to explain the determinants of commonalities, and differences in the regulation of platform economy companies across European cities.
Approach
The rise of the platform economy presents a fundamental challenge to policymakers. Larger cities, in particular, have to deal with emerging problems created by the rise of platform companies, such as Uber, Airbnb or E-Scooter providers. Responses to this challenge have varied, not just cross-nationally but, more significantly, across sectors and subnational levels, including cities. In view of the differentiated responses, this project explores how sub-national governments and administrations of larger cities have adapted to the rise of the platform economy. In particular, this project investigates European sub-national regulation of the platform economy in the transport and housing sectors. It aims at mapping, comparing and explaining how states and cities have adapted to the rise of the platform economy. We seek to understand how regulatory challenges have re-cast the regulatory state and its normative foundations. This study is particularly interested in the platform economy’s impact on regulatory standards and enforcement practices.
The project contributes significantly to comparative public policy research: empirically, by building the first comparative database of the sub-national and local regulatory styles of the platform economy in about 200 European cities in two sectors; conceptually, by combining the literatures on national regulatory styles, political economy and multi-level governance; by an innovative mixed methods analysis and with a theoretical contribution to the development of the regulatory state in the digital age.