Regulation of the global transport industry: An institutional account

Regulation of economic activity takes place through a complex web of rules, (property) rights, laws, institutional arrangements and coordination mechanisms. 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 societies. 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 governance and business organization models – observed around the world (Whitley, 1999, Hall and Soskice 2001). [...]

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