Transnational regulatory capture? An empirical examination of the transnational lobbying of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision

Kevin Young

Review of International Political Economy, 2012, vol. 19, issue 4, 663-688

Abstract: Since the global financial crisis, scholars of international political economy (IPE) have increasingly relied on the concept of ‘regulatory capture’ to explain the weakness of regulatory oversight and, hence, regulatory failures. Yet despite the widespread use of the concept of regulatory capture, its precise mechanisms are not well understood. This paper empirically investigates this hypothesis by examining one important institution of global financial governance that has been subjected to intense private sector lobbying at the transnational level: the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Using extensive archival material as well as interviews with participants in the generation of the Basel II Capital Accord, I argue that while private sector lobbyists had unprecedented access to the regulatory policymaking process, this access did not always translate into influence. Furthermore, when influence was present, it sometimes had the effect of increasing regulatory stringency, rather than weakening regulation. As such, I argue that our understanding of the process of transnational policy formation would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of the contingency of private sector ‘influence’ over the regulatory process, rather than the extensive, all-or-nothing depiction of regulatory ‘capture’ that currently prevails within the IPE literature.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.624976 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:19:y:2012:i:4:p:663-688

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.624976

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().