Soft Law In Governance And Regulation

A rising interdependence among the members of international society and of global civil society has led to an increasing demand for governance without government. The new regulatory mode is characterized as a 'soft law' framework. The contributors to this book define soft law in terms of legally non-binding rules, such as recommendations, codes of conduct and declarations, though they acknowledge the difficulty sometimes faced in differentiating between hard and soft law, whose boundaries are, in practice, often blurred. Focussing largely on the European experience, the book shows how soft law in the EU has become an important regulatory tool in traditional policy areas, like state aid, and in new policy areas, especially within EU's employment policy. It also extends the analysis to the international stage, arguing that international institutions, such as the OECD, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, have for decades used soft law as a means, indeed their only means, of regulating international agreements. Comparisons between the two arenas are then drawn and indicate very different roles for soft law. This book will appeal to scholars of European law and politics as well as those involved with or interested in the policy implications of this mode of governance.

This timely book explores pertinent questions around the legitimacy and effectiveness of EU agencies’ soft law, with a particular focus on the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). It examines the variety of ESMA’s existing and newly granted soft law-making powers, which were intended to deal with the lack of effectiveness of its predecessor but are now called into question due to the ‘hard’ effect of these soft laws.

The Changing Landscape of Global Financial Governance and the Role of Soft Law provides interdisciplinary perspectives on the changing landscape of global financial governance by exploring the impact and role of soft law, directly or as a precursor of hard law, pertaining to financial governance.

Around the world, the role of national regulation is often hotly debated. This book takes as its starting point the fact that legislatures and regulators are criticized for overregulation and for producing poor-quality regulation which ignores input from citizens and stifles private initiative. This situation has enhanced the role of non-state law, in forms such as self-regulation and soft law. In this book, international scholars in various fields of law, as well as socio-legal studies, address the question to what extent non-state law currently influences state regulation, and what the consequences of non-state law are likely to be for state regulation. Drawing lessons for the state legislature and state regulators, this innovative book will be of great interest to academic researchers and post graduate students in the fields of law, regulation, legal sociology, legal theory, law and economics, and environmental law. It will also be of interest to policy makers and regulators those working at ministries and government departments drafting legislation.

An important read for academics and policy-makers alike, Hard Choices, Soft Law asserts that voluntary standards, or 'soft' law, are an important supplement to international law in a number of areas. This key work firstly outlines the approach taken to combining soft and hard law and trade, environment and labour values in the WTO and NAFTA, and in the prospective Millennium Round. Then, using the forestry sector - a realm where formal international law remains largely absent - the book provides a detailed examination of the role of soft law in action. It demonstrates how soft and hard law can be combined to promote trade, environmental and social cohesion, in ways that also permit sustainable development. The book presents a wealth of knowledge from a range of contributors familiar with the work of the G7/G8, the OECD, the Biodiversity Convention and the Codex Alimentarius.

Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This open access book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. The authors argue that Switzerland is an interesting case, from a theoretical, scientific and a more practice-oriented perspective. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.

From home mortgages to i-phones, basic elements of our daily lives depend on international economic markets. The astonishing complexity of these exchanges may seem ungoverned. Yet the global economy remains deeply bound by rules. Far from the staid world of treaties and state-to-state diplomacy, economic governance increasingly relies on a different class of international market regulation - soft law - comprised of voluntary standards, best practices, and recommended guidance created by a motley assortment of international organizations. Voluntary Disruptions argues that international soft law is deeply political, shaping the winners and losers of globalization. Some observers focus on soft law's potential to solve problems and coordinate market participants. Voluntary Disruptions widens the discussion, shifting attention to the ways soft law provides new political resources to some groups while not to others and alters the sites of contestation and the actors who participate in them. Highlighting two mechanisms - legitimacy claims and arena expansion - the book explains how soft law, typically viewed as limited by its voluntary nature, disrupts and transforms the politics of economic governance. Using financial regulation as its laboratory, Voluntary Disruptions explains the remarkable pre-crisis alignment of US and European approaches to governing markets, the rise and prominence of transnational industry associations in the 1990s and 2000s, and the ambivalence of US reforms towards international market cooperation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Rethinking scholarly and policy approaches to international soft law, this volume answers enduring and pressing questions about global finance, International Relations, and power. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

This volume explores the various strategies, mechanisms and processes that influence rule of law dynamics across borders and the national/international divide, illuminating the diverse paths of influence. It shows to what extent, and how, rule of law dynamics have changed in recent years, especially at the transnational and international levels of government. To explore these interactive dynamics, the volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the normative perspective of law with the analytical perspective of social sciences. The volume contributes to several fields, including studies of rule of law, law and development, and good governance; democratization; globalization studies; neo-institutionalism and judicial studies; international law, transnational governance and the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes; and comparative law (Islamic, African, Asian, Latin American legal systems).