Levelling the Field Through Transnational Regulation

Abstract

This paper identifies factors that may lead transnational companies to support transnational regulation in order to level the field between themselves and their rivals when they confront an uneven field produced by either public regulation or private governance. Transnational regulation offers these companies a means to reduce competitive losses by distributing compliance costs to rivals. Differential regulation is necessary but insufficient to result in corporate advocacy for an international agreement or other forms of transnational regulation. Instead, other factors influence the strength or weakness of those preferences for transnational regulation, such as (i) the extent of global footprint, (ii) the net gain or loss resulting from heightened compliance costs, (iii) targets and mechanisms for regulatory change, (iv) market participant profiles, (v) stakeholder characteristics, and (vi) a company’s susceptibility to private governance.