Regulatory Capitalism, Globalization and the End of History

Abstract

Regulatory capitalism is a capitalist order in which actors, both state and non-state, use a wide array of techniques to influence market behaviour. Many actors find themselves in regulatory relationships, relationships in which they are sometimes the regulator and in other contexts the regulatee. Regulatory capitalism is characterized by webs of relationships and interactions that produce what scholars within the University of Hokkaido Global COE program term 'multi-agential governance'. The globalization of regulation has seen many more regulatory states become 'regulatees' in various domains, meaning they have taken on standards set elsewhere. Comparatively few states can claim to have been standard-setters as opposed to standard-takers in the process of regulatory globalization.

Using as point of departure the study of regulatory globalization that I conducted with my colleague John Braithwaite, which was published in 2000 under the title of Global Business Regulation (GBR), I want to focus on the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as agents of regulatory globalization rather than as emerging markets.