Transcending the deregulation debate? Regulation, risk, and the enforcement of health and safety law in the UK Steve Tombs School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK David Whyte School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Abstract This paper considers the context for the development of the concept of responsive regulation,namely the transcending of the deregulation debate. It argues that claims regarding responsive regulation when allied to risk-based rationales for enforcement can, in fact, allow a “deregulatory” momentum to develop. This argument is grounded with reference to a case study of the regulation of workplace health and safety in the UK, with a particular focus upon the period 2000–2010. The paper casts doubt on the relevance and robustness of the concept of responsive regulation. In a context that might have been fertile ground for developing genuinely responsive regulatory policy,empirically we find the development of policies that are better described as“regulatory degradation.”Thus we argue in this paper that, whatever the intentions of its proponents, there is a logical affinity between responsive regulation, and effective de-regulation, and that it is this affinity that has provided a convenient political rationale for the emergence of a neo-liberal regulatory settlement in the UK. Keywords: deregulation, neo-liberalism, occupational health and safety, responsive regulation, risk. 1. Introduction Writing in 1992, Ayres and Braithwaite sought to develop“creative options to bridge the abyss between deregulatory and pro-regulatory rhetoric” (Ayres & Braithwaite 1992, p. 15). This special issue is testament to the widespread impact of their efforts in this respect. Over 20 years, their main conceptual bridgehead – responsive regulation – has been applied, developed, tested, affirmed, and subjected to critique across Australasia, North America, and Western Europe, in a diverse range of contexts from “corrections to school bullying to international peacemaking” (Burford & Adams 2004, p. 12; Nielsen & Parker 2009, pp. 376–377). However, we suggest here that responsive regulation – while appear- ing to be theoretically and conceptually sophisticated – may, in fact, be fundamentally and perilously ambiguous in so far as it reduces the fundamentally antagonistic social relations that are embedded in the regulatory process to a dispute between “left” and “right” (1992, p. 12). Thus, responsive regulation offers no way of understanding or responding to antagonistic social relations, but rather, proposes a means of transcending Correspondence: David Whyte, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK. Email: whyted@liverpool.ac.uk Accepted for publication 13 July 2012. Regulation & Governance (2013) 7, 61–79 doi:10.1111/j.1748-5991.2012.01164.x © 2012 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd