Regulatory Intervention beyond the Law: Towards a Typology of the Extra–Legal Frontier

Abstract

Regulators can avert corporate behaviour that inflicts risks on society, but is nevertheless compliant with the law. Such regulatory interventions beyond the law evoke contentious questions about their objects, legitimacy, methods, and the norms employed. No framework yet exists to analyse these questions in conjunction. Therefore, this paper proposes a typology of the extralegal frontier. The typology is based on a range of discretionary attitudes of regulators towards their enforcement mandate. This range comprises four types of regulators, with an increasingly extensive attitude: Law Enforcer, Legislative Agent, Social Broker, and Public Architect. The typology integrates diffuse scholarly insights into a coherent framework, which offers regulators and their stakeholders a starting point for reflection on interventions beyond the law.