Regulatory Transformations: Rethinking Economy-Society Interactions

The issue of whether transnational risk can be regulated through a social sphere goes to the heart of what John Ruggie has described as 'embedded liberalism': how capitalist countries have reconciled markets with the social community that markets require to survive and thrive. This collection, located in the wider debates about global capitalism and its regulation, tackles the challenge of finding a way forward for regulation, rejecting the old division of regulation into 'economic' and 'social', as if the two were conceptually and empirically distinct. Instead this rich, multidisciplinary collection engages with a critical theme - the idea of regulating through a social sphere - recognising the embeddedness of economic transactions within a social and political landscape.
A key strength of this book is its integration of three distinct areas of scholarship: Karl Polanyi's economic sociology, regulation studies and socio-legal studies of transnational hazards. The collection is distinct in that it links the study of specific transnational risk regulatory regimes back to a social-theoretical discussion about economy-society interactions, informed by Polanyi's work. Each of the chapters addresses the way in which economics, as well as economic and social regulation, can never be understood separately from the social, particularly in the transnational context.