Regulatory stewardship: the challenge of joining a virtue and a mechanism

Since 2013, New Zealand’s regulatory agencies have had a statutory obligation to carry out regulatory stewardship. They have been expected to adopt a whole-of-system, lifecycle view of regulation, and to take a proactive and collaborative approach to the monitoring and care of the regulatory system(s) for which they have responsibilities. In 2021, after eight years, regulatory agencies have not managed to operationalise their shared regulatory stewardship obligations in a coherent and consistent manner. This article explores the challenges they face in operationalising regulatory stewardship, and it provides some conceptual clarity that may aid these agencies in collaborating to develop and adopt the whole-of-system, lifecycle view of regulation that is envisaged.