The Politics of Global Regulation

Citation

Bazin, Y. (2010), "The Politics of Global Regulation", Society and Business Review, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 219-221. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465681011055622

Confronting “society” and “business” in its own denomination, this peered review has made a commitment to provide a conceptual and practical approach to rethink the position of organizations in their/our social environment. However, Society and Business Review remains an academic journal which emphasizes both analysis and understanding rather than giving solely bold ready‐made answers and solutions. In this perspective, The Politics of Global Regulation perfectly fits. Written by Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods, both Professors in International Political Economy at the Oxford University, before the last financial crisis, this book aims at developing an analytical framework regarding global regulation processes. It provides the readers with an accessible yet rigorous conceptual base to critically understand “new” pervasive dynamics such as governance, rule‐making, agenda‐setting, negotiation, and institutionalization or social movements.

The book begins with its main proposition, a theoretical framework developed by Mattli and Wood that I will describe a bit further. Abbot and Snidal's chapter follows, developing the five stages identified in the process of regulation: agenda‐setting, negotiation, implementation, monitoring, and reinforcement. The other six chapters then use and test this framework in several areas. Helleiner studies a couple of cases that illuminate the ways particular actors shape regulatory outcomes through their engagement at different stages of the process. Sikkink analyzes the emergence of a new regulatory model in the treatment of human rights violations. In Chapter 5, Vogel tackles the development of “civil regulation” on topics that states have failed to regulate nationally speaking. Working on shipping regulation, Burrows notices the dramatic changes that have taken place since the 1970s. Finally, Goldstein and Steinberg explore the shift away from rule‐setting through a negotiated legislative process, toward a judicial process of rule‐making in international trade. The book closes on Kahler and Lake assessment on the implications of emerging forms of global governance for the politics of global regulation.

Broadly defining regulation as the organization and the control of economic, political and social activities, Mattli and Wood overcome simplistic perspectives (pure and perfect information, idealization of a common interest, etc.), to view regulation change as a negotiated, implemented, monitored, and reinforced phenomenon. It is a political process in which public “institutions” (supra national organizations, states, and cities) meet private actors (NGOs, firms, associations) constituting sometimes very powerful coalition defending a wide variety of interests. The purpose of this book is neither to validate an idealistic view of regulation (a remedy to its capture by old‐fashioned value systems and discriminatory regulatory schemes) nor to discredit such a system (considering that the rules of the game are mainly set in favor of advanced industrial countries). The main goal seems to be the development of an analytical framework capable of assessing major regulatory changes at a global level. According to the authors, two main processes shape these changes: the demand for regulation and the ways it affects the institutional context. This analytical approach could bring more clarity to the lively debates (and often quarrels) about regulation.

Seeking to clarify the field, Mattli and Woods start to present their analytical framework by defining key concepts such as regulation capture (the control of the regulatory process) or public interest (confronting three schools of thought: the “idealist,” the “rejectionist,” and the “proceduralist”). In this overproductive literature, the authors consider two main dimensions shaping regulatory outcomes: demand and institutional supply. The institutional context of regulation describes the locus where rules are drafted, implemented, monitored and enforced. This context can be either extensive when citizen control mechanisms or open forums exist and are accessible, or limited if the few regulatory forums are club‐like (exclusive, closed, and secretive). Demand‐side conditions requires the diffusion of information that can generate a change if it meets the needs of groups and give birth to a convergence of interests driven by a set of key powerful ideas ensuring the involvement in the lengthy process of regulatory change. These two dimensions produce an analytical framework that the authors offer us in order to understand regulatory outcomes, and potentially regulation change. This framework (Figure 1) is the central proposition of the book and is discussed along all remaining chapters.

Here, Mattli and Woods provide us with what seems to be an introduction to a rigorous understanding of “global regulation.” Although the book scans the available literature through certain lenses, their analytical tool enables us to get a broader perspective.

The main criticism one could cast on them is the lack of elaboration on the core concept of institution, which is a pity for a book dealing with “regulation,” “convergence of interests,” “rule‐making” and “powerful ideas.” Indeed, considering that the early approaches to this subject derive mainly from sociology and anthropology, it might have been interesting to use, for instance, an institutionalist point of view to enrich the analysis since, according to Scott (2001), regulation is one of the three pillars of any institution (along with normative and cultural‐cognitive).

Moreover, using Mary Douglas anthropology and her grid/group analysis would have allowed the authors to acknowledge the limitation of their work in realizing that they may have only elaborated on one of Douglas' four types of institutional logic or culture by resorting to a market analysis, active individualism, what is not a surprise given that the authors are economists […] In brief, using the concept of institution would definitely have enriched this intriguing book and should have been discussed more extensively, even possibly to discard this concept through arguments derived from economics.

Figure 1