The limits of deregulation: Transnational interpenetration and policy change

Abstract. Deregulation became a major cross-national trend in the 1980s. Proponents of deregulation have included neoclassicists, pragmatists and certain analysts on the Left and Center-Left. Deregulation has a number of unintended or unforeseen consequences. A major issue is the development of new, market-oriented regulations and regulatory structures – the first category of 'reregulation'. Another is the cross-national knock-on effect of regulatory changes. And a third is the emergence of new forms of market stabilization and control, whether by the state or at the transnational level. A crucial feature of deregulation is the change in the wider pattern of state intervention from the 'welfare state' model to that of the 'competition state'. A number of competing explanations for deregulation can be identified – market explanations, institutional/technological explanations and political explanations – each of which has significant variants. These explanations can be seen to apply in the real world at four different levels: the 'global' level; that of various intermediary transnational political structures; the state level; and the level of 'self-regulation' of a neo-corporatist kind.