Antibiotic Resistance, Polycentricity, and the Regulation of Antibiotic Prescribing in the Primary Care Setting

David J. Carter ()
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David J. Carter: Faculty of Law & Justice, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Sydney 2052, Australia

Laws, 2025, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-26

Abstract: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent global challenge requiring an effective regulatory response, particularly regarding the governance of antibiotic prescribing. Dominant understandings of prescribing, however, are marked by a vision of the regulatory field with a strong ‘centre’—namely, the prescriber—whose actions are given a central role in directing the flow of events around AMR through a form of command-and-control rule. This insistence on a strong ‘centre’ and upon juridical forms of governance is de-centred in many contemporary conceptions of regulation. Drawing on data from interviews with patients who are enmeshed within AMR-related regulatory systems in the Australian primary care setting, this article argues that this regulatory field is polycentric in nature with signs that multiple regulatory actors influence prescribing and thus AMR-related outcomes. This polycentricity radically alters the capacity of individual actors to influence the flow of events around prescribing and indicates different regulatory approaches are required to realise objectives regarding AMR.

Keywords: antimicrobial resistance; AMR; antibiotic resistance; regulation; health law; governance; polycentric regulation; primary care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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