The Design of Competition Law Institutions and the Global Convergence of Process Norms: The GAL Competition Project

Abstract:     
This paper is an account of the institutions of antitrust enforcement and adjudication in nine jurisdictions, across six continents, and the four principal international bodies involved with issues of antitrust. It synthesizes nine studies that illuminate the inner workings of each of systems in the sample studied and it exposes their norms, all in the quest to determine whether there are global norms of procedure and process. The paper reveals that there are indeed common norms across very different institutional arrangements, most of which are currently embedded in the systems and some of which are aspirational.

This study is a counterpart to studies on the convergence of the substantive rules and standards of antitrust law. The paper observes an emerging "sympathy of systems" (as opposed to identity of systems) in which global process norms, along with substantive norms, play a critical role in forging the global coherence of a national network of competition law systems.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 80

Keywords: Antitrust, enforcement, institutions, accountability, administrative law, international administrative law, due process, transparency, separation of functions, rule of law

JEL Classification: K4, K21, K23, L40, L50, P50, H11

working papers series