Querying Economic Globalization and Regulatory Capitalism: Transnational Private Regulations in the Chilean Farmed Salmon Industry

• In Event: 473 - Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Markets and Economics

Abstract

Economic globalization challenges institutional arrangements at a national level, especially in reference to developing countries. Since the 1980s, Latin American countries have faced a liberalization of economic policies and the retreat of the state as guarantor of economic development and market regulation. Consequently, several environmental and social externalities emerged under these neoliberal regimes. However, the 1990s is the decade where public agencies of regulation proliferate impressively, leading some scholars to call this process as the establishment of a “regulatory capitalism” (Jordana & Levi-Faur, 2005). Within the aforementioned regulatory capitalism, international private regulations have been seen as a legitimate mean to accomplish standards of quality for exporter companies and, by this way, endorsing a competitive participation in the global market. Studying the case of Chilean farmed salmon industry as the second largest exporter in the world; this proposal research aims to shed light on the role of international private regulations in the way that developing countries solve their environmental governance challenges as a consequence of their strive for achieving a successful insertion into the global market. On one hand world-system theory emphasizes the asymmetrical position of developing countries in the global capitalism, being private regulations a response to the requirements from the economies and agents that drive the global market; on the other, “world society” scholarship understands the phenomenon of private regulation an unavoidable effect of the globalization era being a contagious diffusion of global practices and potential ways of solution to problems of environmental governance.

Author

• Ricardo Enrique Rivas, University of Arizona