David Levi-Faur is the Wolfson Family Chair in Public Administration. He is Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Federmann School of Public Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a leading and foundational scholar in the field of regulation and governance who has pioneered theoretical breakthroughs, specifically through his research on diffusion, regulatory governance, and regulatory capitalism. Levi-Faur is one of the highest most ranking political scientist globally. He is a founding editor of Regulation & Governance, a top journal that serves as the leading platform for the study of regulation and governance in the social sciences. He is currently working on a five years ERC project on Regulatory Trust.

Visiting activity

Decentralised governance and self-regulation in sustainability transition relies on trust between actors. However, pervasive scandals and concerns about greenwashing suggest distrust.Governance strategies to repair and build trust via intermediaries provide some solutions. Different institutional strategies are indeed available to repair and build trust via ESG rating providers as regulatory intermediaries, in sustainable finance.
By analyzing the development of regulatory regimes around ESG rating, Prof. David Levi-Faur aims to investigate two questions: First, what were the political dynamics around the adoption of ESG ratings provider rules? Second, what are the differences between the trust-building and repair strategies deployed by the EU, compared to other jurisdictions?

During his visiting research period at the Department of Law and Economics of Unitelma Sapienza – University of Rome , Prof. David Levi-Faur aims to analyze different trust-repair strategies vis-à-vis key dimensions of trustworthiness that can be deployed in decentralised transition. In particular Prof. David Levi-Faur
wants to look at the role regulatory intermediaries may deploy as trust building and repair mechanisms for the sustainable finance ecosystem as a whole. A variety of enhanced and enforced self-regulation regimes which rely on regulatory intermediation will thus be investigated to see if enhanced self-regulation regimes may evolve into enforced self-regulation.