Regulation in practice: Power, resources and context at the local scale in UK food retailing

Abstract

This article uses a relational lens to explore the conflict between the regulatory state and a leading food retailer seeking store expansion within one catchment in south-east England over an eight-year period. The research highlights the relational power geometries which play out in context between regulators and a regulated corporate firm to emphasise the role of power, resources, and scale. The research teases out how the power of the state to uphold an interpretation of market rules is compromised by a lack of responsiveness compared to both the proactive and reactive tactics of the well-resourced corporate retailer. It recognises how multiple regulatory agents of the state with divergent goals, sometimes situated across different spatial scales of governance, can produce markedly different judgements resulting in outcomes that are not in the public interest. Such situations require swift and coherent regulatory responses and can reveal the need for changes to the organisation of the regulatory infrastructure itself.