EMERGENT GOVERNANCE: COMPETITION POLICY AS PLATFORM REGULATION

Much of the scholarly debate around platform regulation is outcome-focused, concerning rules and norms that should govern platform behavior, rather than focusing on questions of policy processes. However, the question of politics underlying the development of these rules is essential to understanding how and why particular forms of oversight have developed in response to the growing scope of platform capitalism. To address this gap, this paper provides a preliminary account of why competition policy has emerged as a prominent governance mechanism for platform oversight, which privileges stronger antitrust enforcement and economic regulation and has resulted in antitrust lawsuits against and investigations into major tech companies like Google and Facebook. With the US as a case study, I examine a series of 2017-2020 policy debates about oversight of digital platform markets, exploring how the boundaries of competition policy are discursively contested and negotiated in these debates by stakeholders ranging from policy experts to regulators to public interest groups. I argue that these policy debates, driven by a burgeoning antimonopoly movement, produced a set of policy ideas vis-à-vis platform oversight that coalesced around a governance paradigm rooted in competition policy. However, the framework ultimately ultimately prioritizes optimizing competition in digital platform markets above other goals, like data regulation. Consequently, it came up short in providing a policy answer to the expansive forces driving platform capitalism. I theorize these blind spots as partly attributable to the dominance and insularity of the competition policy framework as a foundation for governing platform sectors.

Insider Status-Membership Involvement Offer Trade Off? The Case of Green Parties and Environmental Organisations

This article theorises and empirically investigates the membership involvement offer in political parties and interest groups in contemporary democracies, to better understand the potential that these political organisations have in performing the role of transmission belts between citizens and the state. The expectation is that parties and interest groups that become insiders will curtail the participatory opportunities for members in decision-making processes, but that insider parties will offer broader avenues for membership involvement than insider interest groups. We explore these propositions by focusing on two Green parties and two environmental public interest groups in the contrasting institutional settings of Norway and the United Kingdom. Our analysis based on primary case study data indicates that insider green parties maintain more inclusive participatory structures than insider environmental groups. The receipt of state benefits leads to less membership involvement in political organisations, unless the state demands recipients of such benefits to be organised democratically.

Group Type and Social Media Engagement Strategies in the EU: The Case of British Interest Groups on Facebook

Although interest group strategies have been studied by a number of authors who compare different types of groups, our knowledge about how these different types of groups differ in the way they use social media as a strategy to realise their goals is limited. In this paper, we use the hierarchy of engagement model and investigate how British public interest groups and sectional groups, which are active at the European Union (EU) level, engage with the public on Facebook. Compared with information and community-type posts, action-type posts can attract more attention on social media. Public interest groups can use action-type messages as a tool for attracting public attention, thus, alleviating their relative disadvantage in attracting and maintaining members. Results show that the use of action-type messages are significantly higher for public interest groups.

Der Zugang öffentlicher und wirtschaftlicher Interessen zum Deutschen Bundestag

ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag untersucht den informellen und den formalisieren Zugang von öffentlichen und wirtschaftlichen Interessen zum Deutschen Bundestag im Jahr 2015. Der informelle Zugang wird über die Vergabe von Hausausweise für den Bundestag erhoben, der formalisierte Zugang über Einladungen zu öffentlichen Anhörungen der Bundestagsausschüsse. Der Beitrag geht dabei von den Annahmen des Ressourcenabhängigkeitsansatzes aus, dass Informationen und Unterstützung access goods für den Bundestag sind, welche für den Zugang zu Hausausweisen und Anhörungen unterschiedlich förderlich sind und von organisierten Interessen in unterschiedlichem Maße angeboten werden können. Die Analyse kommt zu zwei zentralen Ergebnissen: Zum einen unterscheiden sich die Zugangsmuster der unterschiedlichen Interessen. Während wirtschaftliche Interessen häufiger Hausausweise besitzen, werden öffentliche Interessen überproportional oft in öffentliche Anhörungen eingeladen. Vertreter wirtschaftlicher Interessen können spezifische Expertise und Informationen über ökonomische Bedürfnisse anbieten, die ihnen häufiger Zugang über Hausausweise eröffnen. Public Interest Groups, Gewerkschaften und Wohlfahrtsverbände hingegen werden überproportional oft in öffentliche Anhörungen eingeladen, da sie politische Unterstützung für Abgeordnete bereitstellen können. Zum anderen kommt die Analyse zu dem Ergebnis, dass Lobbying eine legislative Unterstützung von organisierten Interessen für verbündete Abgeordnete darstellt. Den unterschiedlichen Interessen kommen hierbei verschieden Rollen in Anhörungen zu. Während Regierungsfraktionen öffentliche Interessen einladen, um Regierungsinitiativen zu unterstützen, sollen wirtschaftlichen Interessen Änderungsbedarf an Gesetzesentwürfen der Regierung aufzeigen.

Multilevel governance or multilevel government?

The commentary returns to the beginning of the career of multilevel governance as a distinct perspective on the European Union and European integration. At the time, multilevel governance allowed a generation of students to overcome the stylised debates between Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Neofunctionalism on how to best capture the ‘nature of the beast’. At the same time, multilevel governance still privileged the role of public authorities over economic and societal actors. While subsequent studies broadened the focus to include the social partners or public interest groups, Hooghe and Marks have retained their public authority bias. The commentary argues that the focus on multilevel government rather than multilevel governance has increased the scope or applicability of Hooghe and Marks’ approach, both within the European Union and beyond. At the same time, the government bias has prevented the multilevel governance approach from unlocking its full explanatory potential.

Trustee, State and Stakeholder: Hindu Temple Management in Contemporary India, 1957–2012

The literature on temple management in colonial and post-colonial India focusses on the dominant role of the trustees and the impact of state intervention. However, this article tries to grasp significance of the role of the stakeholders in the temple management as a bridge between the trustees and the state by analyzing the management history of the Rani Sati temple from 1957 to 2012. It will first explain the historical background of this temple and its managers, the Marwaris. The second section analyzes the form of the temple management from the 1950s to 1970s, and the judicial case against the traditional temple stakeholders, then chief priest and his family members. Because of the national controversy over sati in the late 1980s, public interest groups emerged as the new stakeholders of the temple. Third, this article clarifies the state’s intervention in the temple’s management according to the influence of new the stakeholders. By focussing on the role of the stakeholders, this article discloses how a state intervention can be initiated by the stakeholders and the possibility of transformation of the temple management. JEL: M14, K41, Z12

Inventory of the Recommendations for Patients with Pollen Allergies and Evaluation of Their Scientific Relevance

Pollens are responsible for allergic rhinitis, conjunctivitis, and asthma. The incidence of these diseases, which have adversely impacted the social and professional lives of people who are allergic to pollen, has tripled in the past 25 years. Official institutes, health care institutions, public interest groups, and mainstream news media provide people who are allergic to pollen with advice aimed at reducing their symptoms. The aim of this work was to provide an inventory of the prevention guidelines in the world and to evaluate their scientific relevance. A PubMed search was carried out using specific keywords. The scientific relevance of the recommendations was evaluated based on the publications disproving or confirming their merit. The guidelines issued by 12 countries in Europe, North America, and Australia were inventoried. The recommendations for avoidance were most often based on scientific data regarding their impact on pollen exposures, but they have not been clinically validated. Several studies provided additional details, however, that allowed the guidelines to be further substantiated. These guidelines have been adopted in numerous industrialized countries in the world, and they generally appear to be of relevance.