Regulatory Capitalism

In this sprawling and ambitious book John Braithwaite successfully manages to link the contemporary dynamics of macro political economy to the dynamics of citizen engagement and organisational activism at the micro intestacies of governance practices. This is no mean feat and the logic works. . . Stephen Bell, The Australian Journal of Public Administration Everyone who is puzzled by modern regulocracy should read this book. Short and incisive, it represents the culmination of over twenty years work on the subject. It offers us a perceptive and wide-ranging perspective on the global development of regulatory capitalism and an important analysis of points of leverage for democrats and reformers. Christopher Hood, All Souls College, Oxford, UK It takes a great mind to produce a book that is indispensable for beginners and experts, theorists and policymakers alike. With characteristic clarity, admirable brevity, and his inimitable mix of description and prescription, John Braithwaite explains how corporations and states regulate each other in the complex global system dubbed regulatory capitalism. For Braithwaite aficionados, Regulatory Capitalism brings into focus the big picture created from years of meticulous research. For Braithwaite novices, it is a reading guide that cannot fail to inspire them to learn more. Carol A. Heimer, Northwestern University, US Reading Regulatory Capitalism is like opening your eyes. John Braithwaite brings together law, politics, and economics to give us a map and a vocabulary for the world we actually see all around us. He weaves together elements of over a decade of scholarship on the nature of the state, regulation, industrial organization, and intellectual property in an elegant, readable, and indispensable volume. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University, US Encyclopedic in scope, chock full of provocative even jarring claims, Regulatory Capitalism shows John Braithwaite at his transcendental best. Ian Ayres, Yale Law School, Yale University, US Contemporary societies have more vibrant markets than past ones. Yet they are more heavily populated by private and public regulators. This book explores the features of such a regulatory capitalism, its tendencies to be cyclically crisis-ridden, ritualistic and governed through networks. New ways of thinking about resultant policy challenges are developed. At the heart of this latest work by John Braithwaite lies the insight by David Levi-Faur and Jacint Jordana that the welfare state was succeeded in the 1970s by regulatory capitalism. The book argues that this has produced stronger markets, public regulation, private regulation and hybrid private/public regulation as well as new challenges such as a more cyclical quality to crises of market and governance failure, regulatory ritualism and markets in vice. However, regulatory capitalism also creates opportunities for better design of markets in virtue such as markets in continuous improvement, privatized enforcement of regulation, open source business models, regulatory pyramids with networked escalation and meta-governance of justice. Regulatory Capitalism will be warmly welcomed by regulatory scholars in political science, sociology, history, economics, business schools and law schools as well as regulatory bureaucrats, policy thinkers in government and law and society scholars.

As the papers in this issue of The Annals suggest, the current economic order is anything but free of regulation. Indeed, many policy changes seem to have expanded and extended regulation – in a global sense. The international arena is increasingly legalized, and new layer of regulatory controls is being created at still another level of policymaking as regulatory solutions adopted in North America and Europe have spread across continents.

This volume introduces readers to regulatory theory. Aimed at practitioners, postgraduate students and those interested in regulation as a cross-cutting theme in the social sciences, Regulatory Theory includes chapters on the social-psychological foundations of regulation as well as theories of regulation such as responsive regulation, smart regulation and nodal governance. It explores the key themes of compliance, legal pluralism, meta-regulation, the rule of law, risk, accountability, globalisation and regulatory capitalism. The environment, crime, health, human rights, investment, migration and tax are among the fields of regulation considered in this ground-breaking book. Each chapter introduces the reader to key concepts and ideas and contains suggestions for further reading. The contributors, who either are or have been connected to the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet) at The Australian National University, include John Braithwaite, Valerie Braithwaite, Peter Grabosky, Neil Gunningham, Fiona Haines, Terry Halliday, David Levi-Faur, Christine Parker, Colin Scott and Clifford Shearing.

As an experiment in reconnecting academia to the broader democracy, this work is designed to invigorate public policy debate by rededicating academic work to the pursuit of solutions to society's great problems.

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

This study explores the problems faced by governments of advanced capitalist nations in regulating their economies through legislation.

Workplaces in the United States are safer today than they were a hundred and twenty years ago. In this book, Donald W. Rogers attributes this improvement partly to the development in the Progressive Era of surprisingly strong state-level work safety and health regulatory agencies, a patchwork of commissions and labor departments that advanced safety law from common-law negligence to the modern system of administrative regulation. Rogers examines the Wisconsin Industrial Commission and compares it to arrangements in Ohio, California, New York, Illinois, and Alabama. Connecting this history to the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970, Making Capitalism Safe will revise historical understandings of state regulation, compensation insurance, and labor law politics--issues that remain pressing in our time.

A critical examination of Canadian regulatory governance and politics over the past fifty years, Rules and Unruliness builds on the theory and practice of rule-making to show why government "unruliness" - the inability to form rules and implement structures for compliance - is endemic and increasing. Analyzing regulatory politics and governance in Canada from the beginning of Pierre Trudeau's era to Stephen Harper's government, the authors present a compelling argument that current regulation of the economy, business, and markets are no longer adequate to protect Canadians. They examine rules embedded in public spending programs and rules regarding political parties and parliamentary government. They also look at regulatory capitalism to elucidate how Canada and most other advanced economies can be characterized by co-governance and co-regulation between governments, corporations, and business interest groups. Bringing together literature on public policy, regulation, and democracy, Rules and Unruliness is the first major study to show how and why increasing unruliness affects not only the regulation of economic affairs, but also the social welfare state, law and order, parliamentary democracy, and the changing face of global capitalism.