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From time to time regulators are required by new legislation to radically alter the normative basis of their decisions. Their ability to do so can, however, be undermined both by a lack of appropriate resources and the self-referential nature of regulatory systems. Some aids to adaptation already exist, but, as this paper demonstrates, these either take the forms of reactions to failure, or are inadequate to ensure certainty of result, as they are themselves reliant on the adoption of new norms of behaviour by regulatory agencies. We therefore propose a novel mechanism building on a proven research methodology to break out of this circularity in adaptation: a modified form of Participatory Action Research embedded within regulatory systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the role of non-State actors at the nexus of international and national law. It illustrates the pivotal role non-State actors can play in the implementation of international obligations and highlights the fact that the traditional dichotomy of national and international law can not fully portray the reality of implementation. It also illustrates the effects of path dependency on implementation. That is the effect whereby once the implementation process has begun, information entering the process automatically shapes the outcome by increasing the costs associated with considering alternative, and as yet undisclosed, information. Thus the option considered first in the implementation process is likely to be the one adopted merely because it entered the arena first. The article uses a Realist lens to examine a case study of the activities of particular non-State actors as the framework for the analysis of the relationship between the two systems of law. It is based on an empirical study that focused on the actions of a particular group of non-State actors – the Sustainable Urban Drainage Scottish Working Party and its members – and their activities in relation to the development of measures to control diffuse pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the application of the sociological imagination during the analysis of data collected during an ethnographic study of an environmental regulator, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). SEPA is tasked with implementing the European Water Framework Directive in Scotland, which will radically alter the regulation of water use. Applying a sociological imagination allowed the researcher to advocate for a more interdisciplinary and equitable understanding of sustainable water use when feeding back initial research results at the end of the data collection period. The researchers introduced socialized definitions of the environment, which linked social justice and ecological concerns. These insights provided a challenge to the traditional bio-physical science focus of the organizational participants, for whom sustainability is a relatively new addition to their duties. Social science perspectives, such as sociology, are central to facilitating this shift in environmental regulation, particularly as the collaborative approach described above requires increasing attention to the social, political and economic contexts in which environmental regulation takes place.