International Regulatory Competition and Coordination : Perspectives on Economic Regulation in Europe and the United States

This new collection of essays by an international group of lawyers and social scientists examines the pattern of regulation now being put in place to cope with the major transformation in the territorial organization of economic activity and of political power. The dramatic emergence of private regulatory systems and new legal regimes raises questions about the relationship between state sovereignty and the governance of economic activities. International regulatory competition is an important dimension of the formation of transnational legal regimes and at the same time influences national legal fields. This book takes the perspective that the regulatory implcations of economic globalization can be made intelligble by reference to existing local, national and international legal institutions and regulations and the mediative activities of the lawyers and other intermediaries whose behaviour patterns remain shaped by those institutions. The essays address each of the three of the concerns that provide the focal points for debates about the global markets' challenge to national regulation. First, is the questions of how legal institutions will emerge to mediate the dynamic of the new international marketplace; second, the technical problem of selecting the appropriate level of government for economic regulation; and third, the concern that the global economy's operation outside of the control of national regulation will, absent of developed international legal institutions, frustrate the democratic process.