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Jacobs, Wouter; Kuipers, Bart --- "Regulation of the Global Transport Industry: An Institutional Account" [2012] ELECD 443; in Van den Bergh, J. Roger; Pacces, M. Alessio (eds), "Regulation and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Regulation and Economics

Editor(s): Van den Bergh, J. Roger; Pacces, M. Alessio

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203434

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Regulation of the Global Transport Industry: An Institutional Account

Author(s): Jacobs, Wouter; Kuipers, Bart

Number of pages: 32

Extract:

11 Regulation of the global transport industry:
an institutional account
Wouter Jacobs and Bart Kuipers



1. INTRODUCTION: AN INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNT OF
REGULATION
Regulation of economic activity takes place through a complex web of rules,
(property) rights, laws, institutional arrangements and coordination mecha-
nisms. The regulation of economic activity forms the superstructure upon
which modern capitalist societies are built. It is through this superstructure that
markets are governed as it constrains and enables economic transactions, the
allocation of resources and the distribution of wealth within and among soci-
eties. The rules governing capitalist relations are created by `the public'
(Lindblom, 2001) and enforced by the state through the political and legal
systems in place that are historically embedded within the deeper social,
cultural and geographical characteristics of that particular society (North,
1990, Amin and Thrift, 1994, Martin, 2000). Regulation as such has been the
prime responsibility of nation-states, being the dominant form of political-
economic organization of much of the twentieth century. This explains the
`variety of capitalisms'­ or the different forms of regulation, economic gover-
nance and business organization models ­ observed around the world
(Whitley, 1999, Hall and Soskice 2001).
However, during the last decades of the twentieth century a process of
national deregulation took place, driven by neo-liberal hegemonic discourses,
aimed at facilitating the integration of national economies into an evolving
world economy and to foster more market-driven forms of economic gover-
nance and self-regulation. At the same time, regulation has become increas-
ingly formulated ...