Why are sector transgressions so hard to govern? Reflections from Europe’s pandemic experience

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this commentary, we address the notion of ‘sector transgressions’, which we define as a problem of infrastructural power with features of regulatory capture. During the pandemic, new markets were created for public service provision in many fields, including but not limited to public health, and governments in the EU decreased regulatory controls on the private provision of public services. The results included increased government readiness to accept economic and political dependencies in return for efficiencies provided by large-scale infrastructures; decreased resistance among the general public to the private-sector takeover of what had been public tasks, and a corresponding lack of transparency about procurement and the alliances being made. We examine the features of these sector transgressions which make them difficult for civil society to resist, namely the instrumentalisation of privacy and data protection, the legalisation of transgressions through the decrease in regulatory controls, and the attractiveness to government of cheap and efficient infrastructural underpinnings to public services.