Social Accuntability and Regulatory Policy Process. The Governance of Telecommunicationsin Italy and Spain

The diffusion of technocratic policy making through IRAs in the EU opens new questions regarding the ways in which accountability and transparency work in multilevel governance. In particular, one of the most salient issues regarding IRAs concerns how to guarantee the existence of conditions for transparency and how to create new channels of accountability, as preconditions of the good governance. The aim of this chapter is to examine what are the characteristics of regulatory processes that render IRAs more or less accountable towards their constituencies that is economic and social target groups (social accountability). Two IRAs in the telecommunications sector are analyzed in order to assess the degree of transparency and overall social accountability existing in the Spanish and Italian systems of governance.