Regulatory Theory (LAW-DS-REGTHE-23)

LAW-DS-REGTHE-23

Description

Regulation and governance have become cross-cutting themes in law and the social sciences.  Empirically we see an explosion of non-state regulatory networks; supermarkets impose standards on farmers in their supply chains and in turn find themselves having to respond to product certification standards emerging from social movements such as the fair trade movement. Internet firms such as Google and payment platforms such as Visa and Mastercard are involved in the global enforcement of intellectual property rights.  Third party actors are active in many areas of crime enforcement; child pornography, international dumping of toxic waste, poaching of wildlife and human trafficking.  States continue to regulate, but in other contexts find themselves on the receiving end of regulation (for example, by international credit ratings agencies) or having to defend their national regulatory standards before international tribunals.  The classical liberal ideal of the night-watchman state seems, at best, a weak description of regulation in modern capitalist systems.

In this seminar we examine many of the advances that have been made in regulatory theory over the last few decades.  We begin with the social psychological foundations of regulation, looking in particular at the limits of rational actor assumptions, defiance reactions and state responses to defiance.  After this we consider influential theories of regulation such as responsive regulation, smart regulation and nodal governance, as well as key concepts such as meta-regulation and compliance.  We look at the way in which regulation has changed in capitalism, focussing in particular on the regulatory capitalism hypothesis.  We end by exploring the application of regulatory theory to problems in fields such as crime, environment, health, human rights, as well as broader public good problems such as climate change and financial stability. 
By the end of the seminars a student should have a more integrated view of the developments in regulatory theory, a more refined approach to thinking about what constitutes good or bad regulation, and should have more tools with which to analyse emerging regulatory problems such as the regulation of artificial intelligence.

First, Second & Third Term: registration from 25 to 28 September