Bignami, Francesca --- "Individual Rights and Transnational Networks" [2010] ELECD 841; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter (eds), "Comparative Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Comparative Administrative Law

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446359

Section: Chapter 37

Section Title: Individual Rights and Transnational Networks

Author(s): Bignami, Francesca

Number of pages: 7

Extract:

37 Individual rights and transnational networks
Francesca Bignami


Today the paradigm of public policymaking is global, not simply national or local. Rules
and standards are decided, fiscal and macroeconomic policy is determined, and policy
commitments are enforced through regional and global institutions that have simulta-
neously built upon and transformed their national bureaucratic counterparts. Some of
these institutions are traditional international organizations and tribunals, which have
proliferated and expanded over recent years. Yet transnational regulatory networks, in
which decisionmaking occurs through routine contacts among national civil servants,
are quickly becoming the primary institutional vehicle through which cross-national
policymaking occurs.
Networks marry domestic bureaucratic capacity with transnational policy ambitions
and thus fall at the intersection of a number of disciplines: administrative, criminal, and
constitutional law, international law, public policy studies and international relations
theory. These different research traditions have begun to raise and offer answers to a
number of important questions about the nature and promise of regulatory networks:
Under what circumstances do states choose to cooperate through networks as opposed
to international organizations and more traditional international institutions (Raustiala
2002, Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2009)? Relatedly, what are the advantages and disadvan-
tages of networks over more traditional forms of international cooperation (Slaughter
2004, Verdier 2009, Zaring 1998)? Under what circumstances can this form of transna-
tional cooperation be expected to generate international convergence or other types of
policy outcomes (Singer 2007)? And what types of public law metrics should be used
to evaluate regulatory networks and how has the experience ...