Good(s) for everyone? Policy area competition and institutional topologies in the regime complexes of tax avoidance and intellectual property

Dassler, Benjamin (2022): Good(s) for everyone? Policy area competition and institutional topologies in the regime complexes of tax avoidance and intellectual property. In: Journal of International Relations and Development, Bd. 25, Nr. 4: S. 993-1019

Abstract

While many issue areas of global governance have witnessed the proliferation of evermore overlapping institutions, the topologies underlying regime complexes differ from strongly centralised, to rather decentralised institutional structures. This paper contributes to a better understanding of this phenomenon in two ways. First, it proposes a conceptualisation of institutional topologies that takes a social network perspective. Second, building on economic good theories, the paper complements the existing arguments about policy area competition claiming that they overlooked the important role of the (non-)excludability of institutional benefits. This policy specific variable shapes an institutional complex's propensity for competition which, in turn, spurs the (de)centralisation of institutional complexes. Two structured comparisons provide empirical support for this argument: comparing the propensities for competition and network structures underlying the institutional complexes of TA and intellectual property protection, I show that despite their many similarities, fundamental differences regarding the excludability of institutional benefits co-vary with fundamentally different institutional configurations. I complement these findings with qualitative case studies of institutionalisation processes in both policy fields rendering further empirical support for the theory's underlying causal claim.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 320 Politik
• ISSN: 1408-6980
• Sprache: Englisch