The constitution of a transnational policy field: negotiating the EU internal market for products

Abstract:

Since the mid-1980s, the co-operation between the European Community and private European standardization organizations has been pivotal for the EU's political project of making an internal market for products. Within regulatory state theory and legal sociology, this co-operation has predominantly been studied in terms of problems of political legitimacy and regulatory control and efficiency. Common to these studies seems to be that it is taken for granted that the Community is the political entity creating the internal market. While this view may have been adequate up until the mid-1980s, this article suggests that in the current market creation strategies, the public/private boundary has de facto become a boundary within a political order. A new political order for the regulation of the internal market for products has emerged which is more encompassing than the Community. We suggest that the constitution of this political order be identified and studied applying the analytical concept of policy field.