Neither ‘Public’ nor ‘Private’, ‘National’ nor ‘International’: Transnational Corporate Governance from a Legal Pluralist Perspective

Abstract

This paper contends that the challenging nature of the regulation of global corporate conduct requires an adequately differentiated approach towards the identification and analysis of the norms in question. In part I, I review the context of ‘state intervention’ and ‘market self‐regulation’, in which the current discussion of regulatory responses to the economic/financial crisis and the role of self‐regulation occurs, before laying out the concept of ‘transnational legal pluralism’ in part II. In part III, I argue that an exemplary area such as corporate governance can best be understood as an instance of transnational legal pluralism, a field that becomes visible through a particular methodological lens. In part IV, I conclude by suggesting how the lessons of such a case study can contribute to an ongoing theoretical investigation into the nature of global regulatory governance, using the concept of ‘rough consensus and running code’.