Regulating Difference

2021 ISSR Best Book Award (International Society for the Sociology of Religion) Transnational migration has contributed to the rise of religious diversity and has led to profound changes in the religious make-up of society across the Western world. As a result, societies and nation-states have faced the challenge of crafting ways to bring new religious communities into existing institutions and the legal frameworks. Regulating Difference explores how the state regulates religious diversity and examines the processes whereby religious diversity and expression becomes part of administrative landscapes of nation-states and people’s everyday lives. Arguing that concepts of nationhood are key to understanding the governance of religious diversity, Regulating Difference employs a transatlantic comparison of the Spanish region of Catalonia and the Canadian province of Quebec to show how processes of nation-building, religious heritage-making and the mobilization of divergent interpretations of secularism are co-implicated in shaping religious diversity. It argues that religious diversity has become central for governing national and urban spaces.

Banking regulation has been the subject of intense debate in recent years. This book contributes to that debate in its study of the impact of financial regulation on Spanish banking performance, especially profitability, from the end of the Spanish Civil War to the end of the Franco regime. Maria Pons discusses the Francoist authorities' policy of forced industrialization based on heavy industry, and the huge interventionist apparatus that it set up to involve banks in its industrialistic programme. This included several items of banking legislation related to the fixing of interest rates, the expansion of the sector, mergers and so forth. Pons explains the emergence of this regulatory framework and its development to the mid-1970s, as well as examining in detail the response of the Spanish banks to these regulations, and their attempts to take advantage of the opportunities they offered to reduce competition and uncertainty. The book also analyzes the 1962 reforms and subsequent legizlation and the lack of success they had in reducing public intervention in the banking sector.

Mark Findlay's treatment of regulatory sociability charts the anticipated and even inevitable transition to mutual interest which is the essence of taking communities from shared risk to shared fate. In the context of today's global crises, he explains that for the sake of sustainability, human diversity can bond in different ways to achieve fate.

Financial instability threatens the global economy. The volatility of capital movements across national borders has led many observers to argue for a reformed "global financial architecture," a body of consistent rules and institutions to prevent financial crises. Yet regulators have a decidedly mixed record in their attempts to create global standards for the financial system. David Andrew Singer seeks to explain the varying pressures on regulatory agencies to negotiate internationally acceptable rules and suggests that the variation is largely traceable to the different domestic political pressures faced by regulators. In Regulating Capital, Singer provides both a theory of the effects of domestic pressures on international regulation and a detailed analysis of regulators' attempts at international rulemaking in banking, securities, and insurance. Singer addresses the complexities of global finance in an accessible style, and he does not turn away from the more dramatic aspects of globalization; he makes clear the international implications of bank failures and stock-market crashes, the rise of derivatives, and the catastrophic financial losses caused by Hurricane Katrina and the events of September 11.

China’s shadow banking has been a top issue in the past few years. Scholars, policymakers, and professionals around the world are seeking deeper insight into the subject, and the authors had unique insight into the sector through their positions high up in the regulatory apparatus. "Regulating China’s Shadow Banks" focuses on the regulation of shadow banks in China and provides crucial information to demystify China’s shadow banking and associated regulatory challenges. This book defines "shadow banking" in the Chinese context, analyzes the impact of shadow banking on the Chinese economy, includes a full-scale analysis on the current status of Chinese financial regulation, and provides valuable advice on the regulation of China’s shadow banks.

The efficacy of various political institutions is the subject of intense debate between proponents of broad legislative standards enforced through litigation and those who prefer regulation by administrative agencies. This book explores the trade-offs between litigation and regulation, the circumstances in which one approach may outperform the other, and the principles that affect the choice between addressing particular economic activities with one system or the other. Combining theoretical analysis with empirical investigation in a range of industries, including public health, financial markets, medical care, and workplace safety, Regulation versus Litigation sheds light on the costs and benefits of two important instruments of economic policy.