Regulation and Regulatory Agencies
Regulation is a concept that is associated intimately with science, technology, and ethics. In the most general sense regulations control or direct human activities in accordance with a rule that has been promulgated. Neither sciences nor technologies could exist without internal processes of professional self-regulation. Biology includes research on the processes that regulate early embryonic development. The larger societies in which science and technology are embedded are dependent on forms of regulation that run the gamut from social to legal and governmental. Ethics is a form of regulation that often is seen as being more conscious or self-critical than social regulation and more broad than legal regulation.
The modern social construction of regulatory agencies as part of government was one attempt to respond to the complexity of advancing technological societies by "delegating legislation" that established appropriate institutional bodies to create and enforce "administrative laws" in specific areas of need such as water treatment, radio wave frequency allocation, and air traffic control. Reactions to the bureaucratic inefficiencies sometimes introduced by such agencies has led to countermovements for deregulation.
Historical Background and Modern Emergence
Regulations existed from the earliest periods of human history. Heads of tribes established rules that enabled closely related groups to live at peace within defined territories; rules of marriage, divorce, compensation for damage, bequests, and the status of slaves were set out in the Code of Hammurabi, which was carved in stone in Babylon in the 1700s B.C.E.
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