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Over the past two decades, governments have delegated extensive regulatory authority to international private-sector organizations. This internationalization and privatization of rule making has been motivated not only by the economic benefits of common rules for global markets, but also by the realization that government regulators often lack the expertise and resources to deal with increasingly complex and urgent regulatory tasks. The New Global Rulers examines who writes the rules in international private organizations, as well as who wins, who loses--and why. Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli

Dale Copeland's Economic Interdependence and War—discussed in this symposium primarily for its methodology—addresses a classic yet very timely question: Do commercial ties between countries increase or decrease the likelihood of militarized conflict? To answer this question, the book develops nuanced arguments about the conditions under which economic interdependence is more likely to become a force for peace and under what conditions it is more likely to exacerbate the risk of a militarized escalation of a conflict of interest.

Concepts are the central building blocks of all theoretical work. Reflecting this centrality, conceptual analyses and debates have a long and prominent tradition in the social sciences, even if empirical research often moves very quickly from concepts to observations that are assumed to be empirical manifestations of those concepts. Consider, for example, the large literatures about concepts such as power, democracy, and the state; as well as analyses of important concepts in specific subfields of political science, such as the conceptualization of anarchy in International Relations theory or the (ab)use of the concepts of supply and demand in regulatory governance.

Concepts are the central building blocks of all theoretical work. Reflecting this centrality, conceptual analyses and debates have a long and prominent tradition in the social sciences, even if empirical research often moves very quickly from concepts to observations that are assumed to be empirical manifestations of those concepts. Consider, for example, the large literatures about concepts such as power, democracy, and the state; as well as analyses of important concepts in specific subfields of political science, such as the conceptualization of anarchy in International Relations theory or the (ab)use of the concepts of supply and demand in regulatory governance.

This introduction to the special issue combines a review of the existing literature about the causes and consequences of private regulation in the global economy with a preview of the articles in this issue. To organize this (p)review, I introduce a conceptual model "beyond supply and demand," which distinguishes three major subsets of stakeholders of global private regulation, which may (but need not) overlap: the political actors who call for private regulation, the rule-makers who provide such governance for the global economy, and what I call the "targets" of the private regulations, who are supposed to behave according to these private rules. I then highlight the three core questions addressed by the contributions to the special issue: (1) How do private bodies attain regulatory authority; why do private regulators provide governance; and why do the targets of the rules comply? (2) Who governs the global economy through private regulations? And (3) what are the effects of private regulation, and how does the rise of private regulation affect public regulatory authority and capacity?

In this concluding essay to the special issue on Private Regulation in the Global Economy, I review the main findings, focused on the answers that the papers in this issue jointly suggest to the three sets of core questions noted in the introductory essay: (1) How do private bodies attain regulatory authority? Why do private regulators provide governance and why do the targets of these rules comply? (2) Who governs? Who are the key actors in private regulation and what are their motivations? (3) What is the effect of the rise of private regulation on public regulatory authority and capacity? I then identify and discuss several key issues to develop a research agenda for what I call "global private politics."

Private regulation often entails competition among multiple rule-makers, but private rules and regulators do not always compete. For substantial parts of the global economy, a single private body (per issue) is recognized as the focal point for global rule-making. The selection of the institutional setting here effectively takes place prior to drawing up the specific rules, with important consequences for the politics of regulating global markets. In this paper, I develop a theoretical explanation for how a private transnational organization may attain such preeminence—how it can become the focal point for rule-making—in its area of expertise. I emphasize the transnational body's capacity to pursue its organizational self-interest, as well as timing and sequence. I then examine empirically a particularly important body of this kind, which today is essentially uncontested as the focal point for private regulation in its area, even though its standards often have substantial distributive implications: the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). I analyze the persistence and changes in the IEC's formal rules or procedures and informal norms, as well as the broadening scope of its regulatory authority and membership over more than a century.