--- - |2 When do regulatory innovations fail? I provide a novel organizations‐based answer to this question by developing an institutional‐reputational approach to regulatory politics. Regulators cannot hope to monitor the vast majority of market activities, so they must rely on the regulated to condition their behavior on the regulator's reputation: beliefs and expectations concerning the regulator's goals and capabilities. Regulators thus pursue daily activities while being mindful of how these activities will shape their reputation and thus their ability to achieve future goals. However, even long‐standing reputations are rendered fragile when rival actors use the organization's reputation to cross‐purposes. Thus, while reputation represents a major source of power, reputation also proves fragile when organizations face conflicting reputational demands. The fragility of reputations provides a novel explanation of an understudied phenomenon: failed regulatory revolutions. I develop this theory through the analysis of innovative Securities and Exchange Commission activity in disclosure law following the Watergate investigation. - 'Sociological Forum, Volume 34, Issue 3, Page 643-663, September 2019. '