This paper explores debates and politics over the place of regulatory democracy in contemporary South African constitutionalism. Twenty-five years after the formal legal transition from apartheid, regulatory institutions – by and large not the focus of negotiations in the early 1990s – have increasingly assumed prominence within the South African state. Such organisations and their functions do not fit easily within one ‘branch’ of the classic legal theory of the separation of powers into three parts, namely the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. A typology of regulatory institutions in the South African polity includes at least four distinct types. The work of these regulatory organisations in formulating and implementing law in post-apartheid South Africa has become significant in politics, especially over the past decade. While the existence and operation of regulatory institutions does not itself comprise the whole of regulatory politics, such organisations do constitute a crucial component of and locus for such politics.

本文探讨了有关监管民主在当代南非宪政中的地位的辩论和政治。从种族隔离正式进行法律过渡后的25年，监管机构-基本上不是1990年代初期谈判的重点-越来越多地在南非这个国家内占据着重要地位。这样的组织及其职能在将权力划分为三个部分的经典法律理论的一个“分支”中不容易适应，这三个部分分别是司法，立法和行政。南非政体的监管机构类型至少包括四种不同的类型。这些监管组织在种族隔离后的南非制定和实施法律方面的工作在政治上具有重要意义，尤其是在过去的十年中。