Minding Competition in Complex Adaptive Social Systems: The Sociological Approach to Competition Law
90 Pages Posted: 17 Jun 2024
Date Written: May 19, 2024
Abstract
Since the 1970s, the economic approach has transformed antitrust/competition law beyond recognition, developing a solid body of knowledge based on industrial organization and, more broadly, neoclassical economics. This framework relies on an asocial and abstract conception of markets, takes a narrow perspective on the meaning and assessment of competition, focuses on market power narrowly defined and measured, and carefully separates issues of economic efficiency from other broader policy objectives. This framework has been quite successful as it offers an overall approach that is theoretically appealing in its simplicity and empirically relevant. Economic approaches criticising equilibrium thinking and advancing a computational view of the economy have recently challenged the neoclassical economics consensus in competition law. Its significance in policy circles has also started to wane with the greater emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the emergence of a polycentric competition law paradigm drawing on complexity science. However, no serious alternative systematic framework for a regulatory science of competition other than neoclassical economics has emerged, other than adjustments of the neoclassical paradigm to idiosyncratic situations and perceived policy ‘anomalies.’ Developing new approaches that mind competition in complex adaptive social systems becomes crucial. This study, for the first time in competition law and policy literature, explores the distinct contribution of sociology in developing a new regulatory science for competition law and policy, complementing and/or substituting the current neoclassical economics framework. By providing a selective yet holistic account of the different theories and approaches in economic sociology and organisational ecology regarding competition, the study sketches the contours of a distinct approach that could be relevant for both the theory and practice of competition law and which could evolve to a more inclusive of broader SDG concerns regulatory science of competition law, one that fits better complex adaptive social systems.
Keywords: Competition law, antitrust, economic sociology, complex adaptive systems, complexity, sociology, markets, competition, networks, ecosystems, power, computational sociology, agent-based modelling, social systems, institutions, institutional change
JEL Classification: K21, L4, B55, Z13
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