Andriychuk, Oles --- "Thinking Inside the Box: Why Competition as a Process is a Sui Generis Right – a Methodological Observation" [2012] ELECD 406; in Zimmer, Daniel (ed), "The Goals of Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Goals of Competition Law

Editor(s): Zimmer, Daniel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857936608

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Thinking Inside the Box: Why Competition as a Process is a Sui Generis Right – a Methodological Observation

Author(s): Andriychuk, Oles

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

6. Thinking inside the box: why
competition as a process is a sui
generis right ­ a methodological
observation
Oles Andriychuk* 10




1 INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this chapter is to substantiate the argument that competi-
tion is one of the core fundamentals of liberal democracy and the eco-
nomic constitution. As such it has to be publicly treated as an independent
value, separately from the outcomes which it may deliver for consumers,
economic efficiency, market integration or industrial growth. The norma-
tive part of this argument is that the process of competition should be pro-
tected in its own right and that traditional statistically significant criteria
for measuring the performance of competition like growth, wealth and
development should not be seen as either sufficient or even decisive bench-
marks of a successful antitrust policy. The normative claim thereby is that
economic competition should be perceived as a sui generis right.
The positive part of the argument that competition should be considered
as an independent economic value is twofold. It shows (a) why exactly
the protection of the economic aspects of competition is so important for
societies with a market-based economy (be it in its libertarian or com-
munitarian version); and (b) that for the sake of logical coherence and
conceptual clarity the process of competition should be methodologically
disentangled from other important (welfare-centric) economic interests
and explored as a phenomenon which, though dialectically connected with


* Oles Andriychuk is a postdoctoral research fellow at the ESRC Centre for
10




...