Global Regulatory Regimes Research Articles

Definition of State Jurisdiction in the Digital Space

The article examines the evolution of the Internet as an integral component of modern information society and its influence on defining state jurisdiction in the digital space. The author analyzes traditional approaches to understanding state jurisdiction in the Internet space, including the concept of neutral territories with international regimes, analogous to the regime established in Antarctica, in outer space regarding celestial bodies, etc., the concept of limiting state competence to national domain names, as well as the principles of territorial sovereignty, establishment of a global regulatory regime, and the principle of jurisdictional autonomy. Special attention in the article is devoted to ensuring, on the one hand, constant, free, and open access to the network, and on the other hand, protecting users from potential negative consequences. The main methods used in preparing this article are: a set of logical research methods and techniques; methods of analysis and synthesis, deduction, as well as special legal methods. In order to promote a more fair and equal global governance of the digital space and the construction of an information society with a common future in cyberspace, governments of countries should reconsider the traditional model of state governance, as with the development of digital technologies, it has proven to be ineffective, which may lead to even greater resistance from society and the private sector of the economy. Therefore, it is necessary to develop international norms, principles, methods, and standards aimed at effectively regulating the digital space and settling the issue of establishing state jurisdiction in the global network, which will allow finding a balance between public and private security, the efficiency of state governance, and at the same time ensure the protection of digital rights of citizens.

Institutional Provision of Tariff and Non-Tariff Regulation of Cross-Border Trade

Introduction. The study is devoted to a comprehensive study of the global trade system in conditions of global economic instability, in particular, to the identification and analysis of the determinants of deepening its asymmetries in the regional perspective. The study contains a description of the peculiarities of the modern global trade system and regulatory regime, including tariff and non-tariff methods of regulating cross-border trade and key trends in its development.
 Aim and tasks. The purpose of the study is to diagnose the institutional provision of tariff and non-tariff regulation of cross-border trade in order to determine the presence or absence of asymmetries in the global trade system in the regional context.
 Results. The study identifies and systematizes fundamental features of the modern global trade system whose development has been directly or indirectly influenced by regional asymmetries. Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of the major international economic organizations as the main regulators of the cross-border trade process, and to the study of the impact of the use of tariff and non-tariff import and export regulatory tools on cross-border trade asymmetries. The world trading system is divided by country and individual customs territory, depending on whether it belongs to a certain geographical area or to a group of countries with a certain level of economic development.
 Conclusions. Although the expansion of global trade has visually slowed down, the integration of world trade is not over, on the contrary, there are clear signs of the beginning of a completely new phase of globalization. The presence of asymmetry in the world trading system in a geographical context, regardless of the size of the region, has been theoretically proven. According to the criterion of the asymmetry of the trading system depending on the level of economic development of the countries, in general, there is a tendency to increase the level of liberalization of trade regimes by the increase in the level of development. At the same time, it has been proven that belonging to the group of least developed countries does not necessarily mean closed access to national markets, and categorization as a developed country does not indicate the application of the least number of non-tariff measures to regulate trade volumes. At the same time, Ukraine remains a country that has undertaken the most liberal obligations regarding providing access to markets for both goods and services. As one of the world's leading exporters of agricultural products in 2020, Ukraine has set the customs tariff level at 11%, the lowest among group members.

Regulating Global Climate Change: From Common Concern to Planetary Concern

Since the recognition by the UN General Assembly resolution 43/53 (6 December 1988) that “climate change is a common concern of mankind” as well as adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, climate change has emerged as one of the most pressing global environmental challenges. The IPCC AR6 (April 2022) curated scientific evidence has explicitly observed that “Net anthropogenic GHG emissions have increased since 2010 across all major sectors globally.” The cumulative effect of GHG emissions appears to exacerbate the abnormal weather events, melting the polar ice caps and cause other cataclysmic climatic changes. The effects of climate change transcend territorial boundaries and continents. It has provided a normative basis for the concerted international law-making process underneath the existing UNFCCC led global regulatory regime. It designated climate change as a common concern of humankind. The resultant soft normativity has been shaped into the hard law through the trajectory of three international legal instruments that took the forms such as common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (1992 UNFCCC) to international legal commitments only for Annex I countries (1997 Kyoto Protocol) and the nationally determined commitments by the parties (2015 Paris Agreement). This study has sought to place under scanner the graded evolution of the climate change regime through the in-built law-making process premised upon a common concern of humankind. In the aftermath of the UN Secretary-General’s warning about climate emergency as part of “triple planetary crisis”, it is high time the international law scholars, the UN General Assembly and the UNFCCC regulatory process shift into the higher trajectory of climate change as a planetary concern.

Port reception facilities and a regional approach: A bridge for abating plastic pollution in the arctic?

The plastic plague impacting the world's oceans stretches to the polar regions, and has now been documented in all areas of Arctic marine environments from floating sea ice to the seabed floor. As shipping and other maritime activities increase in a warming Arctic, preventing ever more marine plastic pollution is a global and regional imperative. The current international legal regime, despite banning discharge of plastic waste from ships for many years, has failed to halt marine plastic litter from sea-based sources in the Arctic. This paper examines through textual analysis how port reception facilities (PRFs), a critical element of international legal and policy frameworks for keeping vessel-source plastics out of the marine environment, have been insufficiently defined and loosely characterized in global agreements. Assessment of regional instruments and initiatives with an Arctic focus or impact reveals concrete ways in which defining fundamental adequacy criteria of PRFs can be achieved. Regional solutions to filling gaps in the global PRF regulatory regime run the risk of adding to legal fragmentation and conflicting norms. Options for mitigating and managing these risks include regime collaboration and co-creation of standards, which could have relevance to integrating PRFs as plastic waste control mechanisms in a new global plastics treaty.

A ‘biased’ emerging governance regime for artificial intelligence? How AI ethics get skewed moving from principles to practices

Over the past few years, the awareness that the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI) could be attained only through the establishment of a trustworthy and human-centric framework has expanded, thereby prompting demand for regulatory frameworks as well as engendering a flourish of initiatives that set ethical codes and good governance principles for AI development. This study investigates whether the convergence of many of the proposed ethical frameworks around a narrow set of values and principles may be interpreted as a case of transnational norms emergence, a pre-condition for a more structured global regulatory framework or policy regime. Moreover, it explores how this emerging normative framework is reframed in its concrete implementation. Findings suggest that AI governance poses a complex dilemma: while its hybrid governance ecosystem entrusts developers and deployers, mainly from the private sector and technical communities, with the task of translating principles into workable tools, their institutional logics substantially narrow the scope and purposes of the ethical approach.

Sports’ Global Anti-Doping Regulatory Regime: The Challenges and Tensions of Polycentricity and Hybridity

Sport has developed a global anti-doping regulatory regime of great sophistication. It is polycentric — operating at both the national and international level — and hybrid — combining contractual, criminal and administrative tools with public and private enforcement mechanisms. The regime is not without its challenges and tensions, however. Functional, democratic and normative challenges abound. There also are tensions that arise from nesting private transnational regulatory regimes in public domestic legal structures. This article critically examines these challenges and tensions using the Essendon Football Club v Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority as its case study. That case considered the legality and propriety of the Australian Football League collaborating with the state’s anti-doping regulatory authority to investigate alleged anti-doping rule violations in breach of the World Anti-Doping Code. This case illustrates the challenges that arise when the interests of players, clubs, competition administrators, national regulators, and sports’ global guardians, do not align. The article establishes that while sports’ global anti-doping regime has proven itself to be functionally stable, opportunities exist to broaden the regime’s democratic credentials to give other stakeholders a more meaningful voice. Doing so would not only improve the regime’s sense of fairness and justice, it also might improve its effectiveness.

Large-scale collective action in the Arctic Ocean: the role of international organizations in climate governance

The Arctic Ocean plays a significant role in regulating the Earth's climate, yet its environment is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Facing climate change requires concerted action. Based on the premise that spontaneous collaboration diminishes in large-scale collective action problems, this paper discusses, from a legal perspective, the opportunities and limitations that Arctic international organizations face to translate climate change's global regulatory regime into regional settings and to foster collective action. This translation occurs when organizations become collaborative platforms joining several stakeholders, including states, governmental and non-governmental institutions, and civil society organizations. Collective action is also strengthened when organizations display a wide array of regulatory capacities.International organizations face several limitations about Arctic climate governance due to institutional fragmentation, the emergence of new Arctic stakeholders, and the increasing focus on inter-state cooperation that effectively leaves aside non-state stakeholders. These developments could eventually erode this regional governance system.

Power transitions and the rise of the regulatory state: Global market governance in flux

AbstractThis special issue examines the consequences of the ongoing power transition in the world economy for global regulatory regimes, especially the variation in rising powers' transition from rule‐takers to rule‐makers in global markets. This introductory article presents the analytical framework for better understanding those consequences, the Power Transition Theory of Global Economic Governance (PTT‐GEG), which extends the scope of traditional power transition theory to conflict and cooperation in the international political economy and global regulatory governance. PTT‐GEG emphasizes variation in the institutional strength of the regulatory state as the key conduit through which the growing market size of the emergent economies gives their governments leverage in global regulatory regimes. Whether or not a particular rising power, for a particular regulatory issue, invests its resources in building a strong regulatory state, however, is a political choice, requiring an analysis of the interplay of domestic and international politics that fuels or inhibits the creation of regulatory capacity and capability. PTT‐GEG further emphasizes variation in the extent to which rising powers' substantive, policy‐specific preferences diverge from the established powers' preferences as enshrined in the regulatory status quo. Divergence should not be assumed as given. Distinct combinations of these two variables yield, for each regulatory regime, distinct theoretical expectations about how the power transition in the world economy will affect global economic governance, helping us identify the conditions under which rule‐takers will become regime‐transforming rule‐makers, regime‐undermining rule‐breakers, resentful rule‐fakers, or regime‐strengthening rule‐promoters, as well as the conditions under which they remain weakly regime‐supporting rule‐takers.

Dual Roles and Blurred Identities: A Framing Contest between Professional Associations in a Local Strategic Action Field

This paper examines professional associations’ local responses to global demands of accounting standardisation. Our longitudinal study from 1998 to 2018 analyses how professional associations of the German audit profession engaged in an intense framing contest over the adoption of external quality controls. Drawing on the concept of strategic action field and the literature on framing, we unpack how the gap between large audit firms and small audit firms increasingly undermined the capacity of the professional associations to fulfil their dual role of governance and representation. We unveil how their failed attempt to maintain the image of an unified profession ultimately led to the creation of a new professional association representing the ‘small auditor’ professional, which successfully, albeit temporarily, took control over the field of German auditing. Our findings suggest that the passivity of small audit firms in the process of translating global regulatory regimes should not be presumed. Rather, we provide insight into how small audit firms can rebuild their own identity by actively responding to waves of global regulation. Doing so, and contrary to prior research, our case highlights that governance units within strategic action fields are not necessarily aligned with the interests of the most powerful field actors.

Technical monitoring considerations for advancing CCS Projects under the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard in relation to other global regulatory regimes

The California Air Resources Board Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) seeks to reduce GHG emissions associated with transport fuels used in California, including those produced outside the state and imported for use. The LCFS recognises emissions reductions through carbon capture, utilisation and geologic storage (CCUS) and enables these to generate LCFS credits provided that regulatory requirements and guidelines set forth within the LCFS CCS Protocol (CCSP) are met. These guidelines are focused on demonstration of “permanent storage” and environmental integrity which includes the entire storage complex but predominantly focuses in the near-surface and surface. Our analysis of the CCSP indicates several technical challenges with the regulation as written including 1) the requirement of prescriptive monitoring technologies, 2) a non-negotiable 100-year post injection site care period (PISC), 3) the need for meaningful data collection before a project can be certified, and 4) the expectation that environmental variations over the 100+ monitoring period can be predicted from a year of environmental baseline data. We discuss the technical ramifications of these requirements and discuss the ways in which common and low-cost near surface monitoring techniques can best be used to satisfy the requirements in light of new learning in environmental monitoring.

Who speaks for the night?

Efforts to control artificial light at night (ALAN) through public policies began in the late 1950s, yet light pollution continues to grow at a global average rate roughly twice that of population growth. The current global ALAN regulatory regime is clearly inadequate to solve the problem, and achieving meaningful light pollution reductions requires a new approach. This paper reviews the legal status quo, introduces the “Rights of Nature” doctrine, and advances the idea of nighttime darkness as a natural characteristic of sufficient inherent value to merit legal consideration in the Rights of Nature context. It concludes with a series of recommendations for ways forward, including the recognition of the intrinsic value of dark skies in the preambulatory language of legislation, formulating new policies in anticipation of broad adoption of Rights of Nature statutes, and advancing the significance of natural nighttime darkness in case law arguments.

Beyond transparency: A consideration of extraction's full costs

This special section Beyond Transparency: Rethinking the Government of Extraction examines the relationship between international transparency discourse in the extractive sector, and the persistent association of unaccountable government, socioeconomic injustice and ongoing environmental hazards associated with extractive firms and their operations. Our critical analyses of transparency- situate the discourse and practice within the overall turn-of-millennium regulatory capture of states in the global North - including Canada, the US and the UK - by oil and mining industry interests. Contributors probe how transparency regimes have been applied to oil and extractive sector ‘host states’ in the global South, in particular Nigeria, while the rent-seeking practices that these regimes seek to expose are rarely tied to corporate malfeasance in the North. We employ this introduction to consider global transparency discourse and regulatory regimes in the light of the full cost of extraction. Since the turn of the millennium, we argue, attention to extraction's full costs have been largely overshadowed in policy discourse via global transparency regimes, notably the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

Institutionalism beyond methodological nationalism? The new interdependence approach and the limits of historical institutionalism

This article critiques New Interdependence Approach (NIA) explanations of global regulation, positing instead a State Transformation Approach (STA). Rightly critical of state-centric frameworks on the politics of globalisation, the NIA seeks to explain the emergence and distributional outcomes of global regulatory regimes, arguing that they stem from struggles sparked by overlapping rules that cut across national boundaries and which reshape domestic and international institutions. While the NIA presents a useful description of this process, and its efforts to overcome methodological nationalism are welcome, its explanatory power is limited by its roots in historical institutionalism, which fails to specify adequately the context that shapes political struggles, producing unsystematic, ad hoc accounts. Conversely, the STA explicitly locates struggles over global regulatory regimes within the wider context of evolving global capitalism and associated shifts in the nature of statehood, providing a more grounded and determinate explanation of outcomes. The argument is illustrated empirically throughout with reference to the global anti-money laundering regime. This study’s findings raise question marks regarding historical institutionalism’s potential to advance International Political Economy.

Global Governance, Sustainability and the Earth System: Critical Reflections on the Role of Global Law

AbstractThis article begins by questioning the capacity of the concept of sustainable development to stabilize social reproduction and foster global justice. Based on interdisciplinary perspectives on global governance, it discusses the way in which global law fails to cope with the resonance of advanced capitalism in the world society and ecological systems. Our analysis focuses on the regulatory and institutional features of three interwoven functional regulatory regimes (global finance, energy, and environmental protection), which demonstrate structural governance dysfunction at the expense of ecological integrity and justice in the global realm. The article further examines the capacity of global law to foster a ‘compositive’ and ‘compensatory’ contribution to global justice and the stability of the Earth system through global constitutionalism. In this context, it concludes that Neil Walker's global law approach provides a fertile analytical framework for describing the patterns of interaction between different species of global law but proves to be particularly ‘slippery’ in its normative propositions regarding the gap between global law and justice. Drawing from the Earth system approach, we argue in favour of a global material constitutionalism, recognizant of ecosystemic boundaries and socio-environmental impacts of the global socio-economic metabolism. We consider that the gap between global law and global justice is best addressed by devising more deliberative patterns of transnational governance, as well as ecosystem and human rights approaches, in order to accommodate the fair and equitable internalization of material limits across global regulatory regimes that act as functionally differentiated economic constitutions of advanced capitalism.

Global Administrative Law

This chapter focuses on Global Administrative Law (GAL) and its approach, i.e. that global governance may be productively explained through the lens of administrative law (and domestic public law more generally), which however are not alternative to those of international law and other disciplines, but must be used in conjunction with them. Like domestic administrative law, the term GAL can refer to either a scholarly approach or methodology that academics (and others) may use to analyse various forms of global governance, or to a set of actual norms, ‘practices’, or activities or mechanisms that states, IOs and others, including private bodies, use in various forms of global governance. Such twofold dimension, as this Chapter shows, may produce some ambiguities, even in relation to GAL’s role in the putative crisis of international law. Section 1 deals with the genesis and meaning of GAL. Section 2 illustrates the relationships between GAL and its three branches of law, which are international law, international administrative law (or international institutional law), and domestic public and administrative law. Section 3 identifies GAL distinctive features. Section 4 contextualizes GAL within global regulatory regimes under four main dimensions: regulatory, (quasi-)judicial, institutional, and procedural. Section 5 deals with GAL facing the up and down of (legal) globalization, and it focuses specifically on two main problems which mark the relationships between global regulatory regimes, international law and domestic legal orders: the quest for legitimacy and accountability beyond the (democratic) state, on the one side, and the public and private distinction at international level, on the one other. Lastly, section 6 investigates the future of GAL and its scholarship, portraying its limits and opportunities.

The ‘bottom-up pledge and review’ approach of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in the Paris Agreement: A Historical Breakthrough or a setback in new climate governance?

Sharaban Tahura Zaman considers the significance of the Paris Agreement, 2015 in the global climate regulatory regime, explaining how it inscribed a new pragmatic regulatory framework through Nationally Determined Contributions with the intention of delivering adequate mitigation actions and ratchet them up over time so that by the second half of the century carbon neutrality can be achieved. The discussion in the article develops under three broad themes. The first part briefly dwells upon the changing context of the climate governance regime from the top-down to the bottom-up approaches. Then, the second part examines the legal character of the ‘bottom-up pledge and review’ approach of NDCs through the lens of international law. The third part identifies the key strengths and weaknesses of NDCs’ ‘bottom-up pledge and review’ approach to effectively address mitigation issues.

Advancing Global Public Health Standards: A Precarious Balance Five Pivotal WTO Cases

This paper examines five World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes and their related settlements to explore the primacy of public health concerns in trade-related matters. It asks first, whether the WTO successfully manages the interface between trade-related questions and global public health concerns? Second, we explore if the WTO decisions reflect strong and effective public health standards? The five cases considered include the French asbestos ban, the EU and US’ restriction of world access to generic drugs, the US-Indonesia dispute related to clove cigarettes, the US-EU disagreement over hormones in beef and Thailand’s attempts to introduce plain packaging for alcohol products.This paper concludes that, despite moments of hope that the WTO might be more than just a trade organisation, the WTO’s major focus is trade, with public health occupying a very small role in its decision making in judicial culture. Even when a world consensus exists among scientific and policy experts that a product is detrimental to human well-being, member states’ trade interests are given greater weight than the immediate need to protect citizens’ health and raise global health standards – access to generic drugs, protection against carcinogenic material such as asbestos and restriction on cigarette packaging. WTO decisions appear to be made in a legal black hole without linkage to human rights legal protection of the individual and the collective. Because the WTO jurisprudence is decided on the case by case basis, frequently the decisions of WTO panels while technically correct they fail to have a larger view of global public health issues. The paper concludes that the WTO is in need of rebalancing its trade vs. health foci, and of heightening the importance placed on public health, in order to address the needs of a 21st-century world and to gain global citizens’ trust. Against a weak trade vs global health regulatory regime, the paper illustrates how compliance with WTO decisions in the area of global public health leaves a great deal of room for foot dragging by governments which emboldens big Pharma and other global actors to use the WTO’s commercial norms to armour plate themselves against progressive change. Hence progress towards strengthening global health standards is unlikely to come from the WTO’s current culture of jurisprudence.

Does the broadly defined ambit of money laundering offences globally, a recipe for confusion than clarity?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to articulate that ill-defined global prohibition regimes such as anti-money laundering (AML) could potentially cause more harm than good. The author has carried out a scoping review of some anti-money laundering regimes such as the USA PATRIOT Act to demonstrate how they have been harnessed in some jurisdictions. It deconstructs the broad scope in which money laundering offences are conceptualized and applied by different jurisdictions and its inherent challenges. It has scoped a wide range of issues, often articulating the inherent controversies in some engendered AML regimes such as the USA PATRIOT Act (2001) and its revised Know Your Customer (KYC) model. Design/methodology/approach This paper was undertaken by straddling a wide range of issues in relation to the shortcomings that are inherent in AML regulatory regimes and their application in practice. However, the analysis focuses on the failures of some AML regimes concentrating largely on the UK and US jurisdictions and, occasionally, drawing examples from African countries. It uses examples from a small sample of countries and then hypothesized that if a regulatory regime is broadly defined, it could cause confusion in its application, let alone being counterproductive to the purpose it was adopted to achieve. It might, therefore, not be very helpful in streamlining how desired norms should be harnessed in practice. Findings The findings of this paper have correlated that broadly and ill-defined regulatory regimes are bound to cause confusion and controversies, let alone being counterproductive to the purpose they were adopted to achieve. The USA PATRIOT Act and KYC are some of the few examples, whereby ill-defined regulatory regimes have provided a recipe for controversies and tensions between regulatory domains and citizens. For instance, the surveillance mandate to US regulatory authorities under the USA PATRIOT Act has generated tensions between citizens and banks. Cases have been filed against banks for over-exercising their powers and interfering with the individual freedoms of US citizens. Research limitations/implications The paper was written largely based on analysis of secondary data on AML regimes and the controversies their application often generates in some countries. For instance, the USA PATRIOT Act has generated tensions between the USA and foreign states, banks and citizens, because of excessive use of its surveillance mandate on the privacy of individuals. Bearing this challenge in mind, it would have been better for the analysis to focus on many countries and, probably, interview bankers and internalize their views accordingly. Practical implications The paper is informative. It could be used for making desired policy changes and enhancing research on global regulatory regimes and how they are evolved and applied in practice. It has practical relevance for banks, researchers, students, policy/oversight institutions and governments and it is therefore a worthy read. Social implications The regulation of money laundering crimes is imperative, because, if left unchecked, it can undermine economies, governments and people and erode the fabric of society. However, as much as it is imperative to enact the desired rules to curtail the threat of money laundering and its predicate offences or even forestall it, regimes should be evolved with caution not to alienate the very purpose they were adopted to achieve. For instance, if the application of engendered rules generates tensions between citizens and regulatory authorities, it cannot reflect well not only on the government’s image but can also be counterproductive. Originality/value The paper was written using primary and secondary data sources but evaluated using empirical evidence drawn from different jurisdictions. It is therefore original because it is written and evaluated in its unique way to extend the parameters of knowledge on evolution and conceptualization of money laundering regimes.

Theorizing Unidentified Normative Objectss of Global Regulatory Regimes

Much of the contemporary theorizing about the growing and diverging body of global regulatory regimes conspicuously avoids dealing with problems of their legality. However, it would be erroneous to think that the mission of this scholarship will be completed if theorists identify criteria that regulatory instruments must satisfy in order to qualify for the status of ‘law’. If this were the case, a number of the existing regulatory instruments would remain under the radar, destined to be classified as “unidentified normative objects” (UNO). This essay contains two main parts. The first part tackles the problem of normativity. If UNOs are really normative instruments, as they are commonly taken to be, it is necessary to elucidate in what ways they can be said to display normativity and how, if at all, this is any different from the normativity of paradigmatic legal rules. In this part, I will unload the two how questions of normativity. Whereas the first refers to the epistemological problem of how we are to ascertain normative statements (norms) and differentiate them from “is-statements”, the second opens up the perspective of practical rationality, by asking how norms provide us with reasons for action. The first part of the paper concludes that there is nothing special about the normativity of law. It will be demonstrated that law’s normative force competes with the normative force of other normative orders, and that its higher level of efficiency should not be attributed to its special sort of normativity, but to the combined effects of law’s normativity and its other typical features – institutionalization and (coercive) guarantees. The second part will be concerned with applying the findings of the first part to two paradigmatic cases of UNOs – regulatory instruments of the World Health Organization and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. This analysis will reveal that although the former qualify for the status of traditional international legal instruments, their degree of normativity – understood as the capacity to give rise to obligations – is very low. On the other hand, although latter instruments do not appear to pass the threshold of ‘legality’, they manage to display a surprisingly high level of normative force. Results of the undertaken analysis will, hopefully, bring more clarity in the burgeoning GAL literature.

The Rationalities of Migration Management: Control and Subversion in an Indonesia-Based Counter-Smuggling Campaign

This article examines an Australian-funded counter-smuggling campaign delivered in Indonesia from 2009 to 2014 as an example of the global regulatory regime known as Migration Management. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Indonesia among the fishing communities targeted by the campaign, we problematize the campaign’s purported success. The appearance of success, we argue, is linked to four interrelated rationalities of governance—security, humanitarianism, managerialism, and colonialism—that shape the terms of reference through which the campaign was conceived, designed, and evaluated. These rationalities “make sense” of a campaign that can otherwise be read as indicative of circular and misdirected strategies of border security. In a second move, we show how the techniques deployed in the campaign give rise to challenges to technocratic control. We argue, by extension, that Migration Management is subject to subtle disruptions and subversions that emanate from the very rationalities through which it is sustained. Our argument exposes the politics at stake in a regulatory regime that is represented as neutral and of benefit to all. It also shows what stands in the way of template reproduction of the Management agenda.