Regulatory Agencies in Brazil vs. the United States: A Comparative Study

Regulatory Agencies in Brazil vs. the United States: A Comparative Study

Dr. Murillo Dias1*, Carlos Araujo2, Thiago Schmitz3, Leonardo Pereira4
1Fundação Getulio Vargas, Brazil
2Rennes School of Business, France
3Rennes School of Business, France
4Université de Bordeaux, France
*Corresponding Author
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2023.10406
Received: 30 March 2023; Revised: 15 April 2023; Accepted: 19 April 2023; Published: 03 May 2023

Abstract: This article describes Brazil’s regulatory agencies compared to the United States, emphasizing their similarities and differences and discussing the Brazilian regulatory agencies in detail. After careful content analysis, key findings pointed out a significant disparity within both countries: while in Brazil, the first regulatory agency was created in 1996 – National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL), in the United States, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was founded 114 years before, in 1887, evidencing a long tradition and expertise regarding the regulatory environment from the North American agencies. There are currently eleven regulatory agencies in Brazil, while in the United States, there are 47. Different types and functions give North American regulatory agencies a higher level of sophistication than the Brazilian regulatory system, meaning that the Brazilian regulatory framework finds an excellent deal for improvement. One of the implications that compile the current work is the discussion about the existence of a political influence in regulating agencies needing to catch up compared to their American counterparts’ pace of innovation.

Keywords: National Regulatory Agencies, Brazil, Regulation, Governance, Public Administration

I. Introduction

Regulatory Agencies (R.A.) are executive branch entities tasked with formulating, regulating, and enforcing laws passed by Congress and signed into Law by the President of particular economic sectors, with the following attributions: (i) promoting competition and preventing monopolistic and anticompetitive conduct; (ii) Development of particular regulations for the regulated industry; (iii) Analyze and investigate relevant market information; (iv) Inspecting, monitoring, and punishing firms in the industry for non-compliance with the rules; (v) when a company delivers a public service, it handles concession contracts; (vi) protection of consumer rights concerning businesses (Cuellar, 2015).

Executive power, some attributions, such as sector normalization, are attributes of the Legislative Branch, while monitoring and punishing firms in a given industry are attributes of the Judiciary Branch, somehow influencing the decision-making process within companies (Quirk, 2014).
Justen Filho (2002) argues that Regulatory Agencies are “intervention powers in the economic domain (in a broad sense), which involves delegation of regulatory powers and attribution of police powers to oversee private economic activities, including arbitrating disputes between individuals.” (p.343)
This article addressed the R.A. of two countries as the units of analysis: Brazil, and the United States, deepening our knowledge of the similarities and differences between both countries, aiming to highlight the pros and cons of their governance structures to provide a new perspective on lessons learned and best practices, helpful to scholars, policy and decision-makers, and other practitioners.

The rationale behind the choice of the two countries lies mainly in their experience and highly contrasting usage of regulatory agencies in their Governance Structure: Brazil is a newcomer compared to the United States regarding regulatory agencies. Only 114 years after the first North American R.A. was created, the first Brazilian Regulatory agency, ANATEL (see Table 1). Therefore, this article examines R.A.s from both countries, comparing them through multiple qualitative methods. Finally, an exhaustive content analysis of the findings is discussed in the upcoming sections.

Full Text PDF