Constitutionalizing Connectivity: The Constitutional Grid of World Society

Global law settings are characterized by a structural pre-eminence of connectivity norms, a type of norm which differs from coherency or possibility norms. The centrality of connectivity norms emerges from the function of global law, which is to increase the probability of transfers of condensed social components, such as economic capital and products, religious doctrines, and scientific knowledge, from one legally structured context to another within world society. This was the case from colonialism and colonial law to contemporary global supply chains and human rights. Both colonial law and human rights can be understood as serving a constitutionalizing function aimed at stabiliz- ing and facilitating connectivity. This allows for an understanding of colonialism and contemporary global governance as functional, but not as normative, equivalents

The Law of Political Economy: Transformation in the Function of Law. Edited by Poul F. Kjaer

This book develops the law of political economy as a new field of scholarly enquiry. Bringing together an exceptional group of scholars, it provides a novel conceptual framework for studying the role of law and legal instruments in political economy contexts, with a focus on historical transformations and central challenges in both European and global contexts. Its chapters reconstruct how the law of political economy plays out in diverse but central fields, ranging from competition and consumer protection law to labour and environmental law, giving a comprehensive overview of the central challenges of the law of political economy. It also provides a sophisticated and multifaceted framework for further enquires while outlining the contours of new law of political economy

From Corporatism to Governance: Dimensions of a Theory of Intermediary Institutions

Intermediary institutions are a multi-facetted phenomenon which has taken many different forms in the course of social evolution. This is also being testified by the evolutionary trajectories from corporatism through neo-corporatism to governance in the European settings from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Against this background, this chapter seeks to outline the key parameters of a theoretical framework suitable for approaching and analysing intermediary institutions. The chapter pins down five central dimensions of intermediary institutions. This is done under the headings: Context, Function, Evolution, Order, and Compatibility

The Transnational Constitution of Europe’s Social Market Economies: A Question of Constitutional Imbalances?

Throughout its history the European integration process has not undermined but rather strengthened the autonomy of Member States vis-à-vis wider societal interests in relation to political economy, labour markets and social provisions. Both the ‘golden age nation state’ of the 1960s as well as the considerable transformations of Member State political economies over the past decades, and especially after the euro-crisis, was to a considerable degree orchestrated through transnational, most notably European, arrangements. In both cases the primary objective has been to strengthened state capacities of public power and law against the encroachment of private interests into the state. In spite of this continuity considerable changes can however be observed in the substantial economic policies advanced due to the switch from a Keynesian to a monetarist economic paradigm. It is suggested that the debate on constitutional imbalances between the EU’s economic and social constitutions should be seen in this light

Law and Order in the Economy: The End of a Paradigm and the Rebirth of an Old One

It started and ended in Chile! This might be the introductory sentence to an economic history of our times. After the 1973 military coup the “Chicago Boys”, a group of Chilean economists educated by Milton Friedman at University of Chicago, took control of Pinochet’s economic policy. A type of policy which later on entered government offices in the UK and the US together with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Today protesters on the streets of Santiago seeks to tear down the core pillars of the paradigm installed by the Chicago boys. Looking at broader developments, the essential driver of change over the past four decades have however not been an economic one but rather a legal one. Or rather the essential change has been the economics discipline acting as an invasive species entering into the realm of law though the law and economics paradigm

The Law of Political Economy: An Introduction

The law of political economy is a contentious ideological field characterised by antagonistic relations between scholarly positions which tend to be either affirmative or critical of capitalism. Going beyond this schism, two particular features appear as central to the law of political economy: the first one is the way it epistemologically seeks to handle the distinction between holism and differentiation, i.e., the extent to which it sees society as a singular whole which is larger than its parts, or, rather, as a mere collection of parts. Different types of legal and political economy scholarship have given different types of answers to this question. The second feature of the law of political economy is the way in which it conceives of the relation between hierarchical and spontaneous dimensions of society, i.e., between firms and the market, or between public institutions and public opinion. The two distinctions can, however, be overcome through a third-way, emphasising the strategic role of law in mediating between holism and differentiation and hierarchy and spontaneity. This is demonstrated through a historical re-construction of the evolution of corporatist, neo-corporatist, and governance-based institutional set-ups of political economy

The structural transformation of embeddedness

The concept of embeddedness plays a central role in the segment of economic sociology and social theory which is inspired by the works of Karl Polanyi. But to the extent that embeddedness is understood in a substantialist manner, implying the existence of a unitary lifeworld, the desire for embeddedness is an impossible aspiration under modern conditions. Throughout the modern era it is however possible to observe the emergence of complex societal stabilization mechanisms, which serve as substitutes to traditional forms of embeddedness. The emergence of function specific cultures, in the form of, for example, legal, political and scientific cultures, establishing a ‘second nature’ in the Hegelian sense, is one example of this. Other examples are (neo-)corporatist institutions which fulfilled a central stabilising role in classical modernity and the kind of network based governance arrangements which fulfil a similar position in today’s radicalised modernity

Regulatory Governance: Rules, Resistance and Responsibility

Regulatory governance frameworks have become essential building blocks of world society. From supply chains to the regimes surrounding international organizations, extensive governance frameworks have emerged which structure and channel a variety of social exchanges, including economic, political, legal and cultural, on a global scale. Against this background, this special issue sets out to explore the multifaceted meaning, potential and impact as well as the social praxis of regulatory governance. Under the notions rules, resistance and responsibility the special issue pins out three overall dimensions of regulation and governance thereby providing a theoretical and conceptual framework for grasping the phenomenon of regulatory governance. This is combined with extensive case studies on a number of regulatory governance settings ranging from the World Bank to agricultural reforms carried by the International Transitional Administrations (ITAs) in Kosovo and Iraq as well as global supply chains and their impact on the garment industry in Bangladesh

The Evolution of Intermediary Institutions in Europe: From Corporatism to Governance

This book investigates the consecutive shifts between three types of intermediary institutions in the European context: Corporatist, Neo-corporatist and Governance institutions. It develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the function and position of intermediary institutions in society, as well as a vocabulary capable of explaining the causes and consequences of these shifts for politics, economy and society at large. The book is designed to fill a gap in three rather distinct, yet also overlapping bodies of literature: European Political Economy, European Integration and governance studies, and socio-legal studies in the European context. Reviews: - Anne Guisset: Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 22, 3, 427-429, 2016. - Ian Bruff, Capital & Class, 40, 3, 555 – 57, 2016

Constitucionalizando a Conectividade: A Articulação Constitucional da Sociedade Mundial

O Direito Global estrutura-se, predominantemente, por normas de conectividade, que se diferenciam das normas de coerência e de possibilidade. A centralidade das normas de conectividade emerge da própria função do direito global, que é a de aumentar a probabilidade de transferência de componentes sociais condensados, como capital econômico e produtos, doutrinas religiosas e conhecimento científico, de um contexto juridicamente estruturado para outro, no âmbito da sociedade mundial. Esse é o caso desde o colonialismo e o direito colonial até as atuais cadeias produtivas globais e os direitos humanos. Tanto o direito colonial quanto os direitos humanos podem ser entendidos como ferramentas à serviço da função de constitucionalização orientada à estabilização e à facilitação da conectividade. Por conseguinte, é possível compreender o colonialismo e a governança global contemporânea como equivalentes funcionais, mas não como equivalentes normativos