Private Regulation Research Articles

Legislative and Ethical Foundations for Future Artificial Intelligence

The effective Regulation and Ethical of Artificial Intelligence is an urgent policy concern. Legislatures and regulators do not possess the specialized technical expertise necessary to effectively convert popular requests into legislative mandates. The excessive dependence on industry self-regulation results in a lack of accountability for AI ethical system and users in meeting democratic requirements. The concept of Ethical Frameworks involves governments mandating the entities subject to regulation to get regulatory assistance from a private regulator. This AI Ethical Frameworks has the potential to address the shortcomings of both command-and-control regulation and self-regulation. Most of advanced states provide governments the opportunity to set policy priorities for AI Ethical Frameworks, while using market forces and industry research and development (R&D) to develop the most effective ways of regulation to set up Ethical Frameworks that align with policymakers' goals.

Проблемы регулирования цифровых платформ: трудности и возможности международного сотрудничества

Digital platforms act as private regulators of their ecosystems. However, until recently, these platforms have not been objects of regulation by the state. Currently, many jurisdictions adapt and update their consumer protection and competition policy instruments and introduce ex ante regulation to protect consumers and competition in digital markets. Regulatory problems derive from the nature of platforms’ business models, the transnational character of their operations, and the significant resources necessary to ensure regulation enforcement and monitoring. Coherence of regulatory approaches applied by different jurisdictions creates legal certainty, reduces costs of compliance and prices, and ensures consistency of requirements with regard to the quality of platforms’ services and user protection. Despite the advantages of policy coherence, cooperation develops slowly and is fragmented due to a contestation over the influence on the rules of governance. This article reviews the main problems and key approaches to the digital platforms’ regulation, and the challenges of, and perspectives on, international cooperation. The study draws on a survey of research articles, national documents on digital platforms policies and EU regulations, analytical materials of research centres and international organizations, and assessments of regulatory practices by concrete jurisdictions. The article explores problems and approaches to ensuring protection of users and fair competition, ex ante regulation application, and multilateral initiatives. In conclusion, the authors put forward some ideas on international cooperation perspectives.

The publicity of EU law and the privatization of EU digital regulation

The publicity of the law is a fundamental principle of EU law, but recently it has come under discussion in the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). This Editorial reflects on the constitutional foundations of the principle of publicity of the law in EU law, giving account of the recent controversies arisen before the CJEU in relation to soft law and harmonized standards, and of the growing tension between this principle and the rights of private regulators in the field of digital technologies.

The Member States in the EU Food System: National Regulatory Options for Sustainable Food Offer, Food Consumption and Food Environments

AbstractThe Framework for Sustainable Food Systems law will either not be published at all or after a long delay. Whereas the first part of the article constructs an empirical and theoretical underpinning about why the EU Member States should therefore act on food sustainability, the second part focuses on what legal measures Member States can take.In the first part, leaning on food systems thinking, we argue that in the absence of EU action in the matter, the Member States remain the most potent lever for taking regulatory action on addressing sustainability in the food system.In the second part, the article provides an exploratory study of potential national legal instruments for making domestic food systems more sustainable, with an emphasis on the regulation of offer and consumption of foods and food environments. The article discusses the following legal instruments in the context of EU law and Member States’ room for action, with examples from a comparative perspective: public procurement purchasing by governments, product composition requirements, fiscal measures, non-fiscal pricing instruments, labelling & certification, marketing, and the regulation of private and public food environments. The article further concludes that it may prove useful to better enshrine the food sustainability paradigm in law at national level.

Transnational Private Regulation of Environmental Sustainability through Commercial Contracts. Reassessing Contractual Governance in Global Supply Chains

Abstract Sustainability standards are integrated and applied in global supply chains through transnational commercial contracts that have come to play a regulatory function in addition to the conventional exchange task. The design of the architecture of contracting, the coordination among contracts, and the content of sustainability terms along the chain is the result of the cooperation of different actors, led by one or more transnational corporations. The paper describes the distribution of private regulatory power according to the structures of the chains- hierarchical, relational, market -and its impact on the compliance with sustainability standards. It considers the qualification system that regulates entry, exit, and permanence in the chain and the Suppliers codes and General principles of sustainability specified in the general terms and conditions. These represent complementary direct and indirect private regulatory instruments that can be deployed to ensure compliance. The choice of instruments depends on the distribution of regulatory power among the private actors and their exercise. Privity of contract makes it often difficult if not impossible direct regulation by the chain leader and obliges decentralization of regulatory power. The analysis shows that only the complementarity between the two sets of instruments enables control of compliance in complex chains whose actors operate across different jurisdictions with the use of sanctioning and remedial powers. The article analyzes how26 principles of effectiveness, proportionality and dissuasiveness may contribute to a fair and non discriminatory exercise of private regulatory power related to the implementation of sustainability standards through contracts.

Occupational health and safety in aquaculture: Organisation of work and employment in small seaweed farms in North West Europe

AbstractThere is evidence that seaweed production can involve a variety of physical risks, but there has been little study of how wider contextual factors – such as enterprise size, economic and business relations, and forms of employment arrangements – may affect workers’ safety. This study explores the impact of such aspects on workers’ experiences of occupational safety and health (OSH) risks and their management in the developing seaweed industry, in North West Europe. Based on qualitative findings from a survey and discussions with owners/managers, workers and stakeholders in the industry, the study identified a number of issues relating to OSH in seaweed production. These include the predominance of micro small enterprises, the presence of significant risks to health and safety and limitations in the capacity of owners/managers to address them, as well as structural and economic factors in the sector that promote precarious work, and the low visibility and inaccessibility of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) to both public and private regulations. The paper discusses experiences of these issues in the emergent industry and relates them to the wider literature about work health and safety in micro and small firms and precarious and non-standard forms of work, typically found in agriculture and food production. Findings point to the need for better orchestration of public and private regulatory influences and further research to determine if strategies that are seen as successful in other sectors could be transferred to the emergent European seaweed industry.

Effects of public and private regulations on wholesale vendors' adoption of agrifood traceability to farms

AbstractAgrifood traceability of farms is extremely difficult owing to the small scale and dispersibility of farms. Fortunately, wholesale markets play an irreplaceable role in agrifood systems and in upstream traceability in many developing countries. This study first explores the mechanism of food safety liabilities related to the adoption of upstream traceability to farms. Then, the effects of public regulation by the government and private regulation by the market platform on wholesale vendors' adoption of traceability are investigated empirically. A unique panel dataset comprising 9287 food safety tests for 396 vendors from a wholesale market is used in the empirical analysis. The results show that vendors behave opportunistically by lowering their level of traceability when they expect a smaller possibility of being sampled. Given the same strength of regulation intensity, the effect of government regulation is larger than that of the market. The experience of failure in recent sampling tests motivates vendors to adopt higher levels of traceability. Recommendations regarding the frequency of food safety sampling tests conducted by the government and wholesale markets are proposed [EconLit Citations: Q18, L53].

Hybrid governance and welfare standards for broiler chickens raised for human consumption

AbstractThis article examines the welfare standards that govern the lives of chickens raised for meat in Australia and the United Kingdom. While ‘meat chickens’ are subject to a wide range of welfare interventions, we focus on the development and implications of the ‘private’ standards which are the most significant determinants of meat chicken welfare in these jurisdictions: the RSPCA Approved Farming Scheme in Australia and the Red Tractor Chicken Assurance Scheme in the United Kingdom. While the jurisdictions appear to have a similar regime that favours private regulation, differences in the origins and governance of these systems can be identified, offering insights into the use of hybrid regulation in areas associated with the welfare of non‐human animals. The similarities and differences in these countries point to the importance of individual relationships, as well as supply chain power in the adoption of private standards as a response to comparatively unstructured community concerns about welfare (Australia) and welfare and food safety (United Kingdom). While hybridity as a form of new public governance can be seen to facilitate innovative and varied responses to state devolution, the article concludes the overarching anthropocentrism of policymakers and the policy sciences explains a closed, incremental, and conservative form of practice in this area. Observations of the wider ‘animal turn’ in the social sciences are recommended to consider future systems of hybrid regulation that are not centred on anthropocentrism and more fully expand hybridity's participatory promise.Points for practitioners Hybrid governance can focus on the use of hybrid organisational design and/or hybrid regulatory practice; each has very different characteristics and their respective use is often a function of local conditions and situations. Hybrid standards‐making systems need to be open to public participation in development and implementation (oversight), or risk capture and moral hazard. Public policy is largely predicated on strong anthropocentrism, which can be addressed through the use of critical rather than simple pluralism to expand the number of interests captured in regulatory practices.

The use of private regulatory measures to create healthy food retail environments: a scoping review.

Different forms of public and private regulation have been used to improve the healthiness of food retail environments. The aim of this scoping review was to systematically examine the types of private regulatory measures used to create healthy food retail environments, the reporting of the processes of implementation, monitoring, review and enforcement and the barriers to and enablers of these. Scoping review using the Johanna Briggs Institute guidelines. Ovid MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Embase, CINAHL Plus, Business Source Complete and Scopus databases were searched in October 2020 and again in September 2023 using terms for 'food retail', 'regulation' and 'nutrition'. Regulatory measure type was described by domain and mechanism. Deductive thematic analysis was used to identify reported barriers and enablers to effective regulatory governance processes using a public health law framework. Food retail. Food retail settings using private regulatory measures to create healthier food retail environments. In total, 17 694 articles were screened and thirty-five included for review from six countries, with all articles published since 2011. Articles reporting on twenty-six unique private regulatory measures cited a mix of voluntary (n 16), mandatory (n 6) measures, both (n 2) or did not disclose (n 2). Articles frequently reported on implementation (34/35), with less reporting on the other regulatory governance processes of monitoring (15/35), review (6/35) and enforcement (2/35). We recommend more attention be paid to reporting on the monitoring, review and enforcement processes used in private regulation to promote further progress in improving the healthiness of food retail environments.

Shifting Modes of Labor Regulation in Global Supply Chains

executive summary: This essay outlines the changing modes of regulation of labor conditions in global apparel supply chains, which are mostly concentrated in Asia; assesses the effectiveness of 25 years of private voluntary regulation by global firms; and examines critically the implications of new European regulation now mandating what was previously a voluntary corporate activity. main argumentAsia is the global center of apparel production, with Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Vietnam all being major exporters. Since the 1990s, activist pressure in developed country markets has forced global apparel and footwear companies to adopt voluntary methods to ensure that their products are not made under sweatshop conditions. Companies developed codes of conduct for the first-tier factories in their supply chains and found ways to audit whether supplier factories were in compliance. However, this voluntary private-regulation model has not been adequate to alleviate labor and workplace concerns in global apparel supply chains. A shift from private regulation to public regulation—the beginning of which may be currently underway in the European Union with the recent introduction of mandatory due diligence legislation—may prove to be a more effective means of bettering labor rights and conditions. policy implications• If the recent EU legislation allows global companies to be legally liable for violations of mandatory due diligence requirements regarding labor rights and conditions in supply chains, a sea change in worker rights and labor practices could occur. • The new legislation would require global companies to adopt more responsible purchasing practices so that their practices are not responsible for labor violations. • The EU legislation could have an impact on sourcing locations, as companies compete for locations that are more likely to provide institutional environments with lower risk of violations. Global suppliers would have a greater incentive to take the high road in terms of employment practices to obtain more business from European buyers. National governments in apparel-exporting countries may be motivated to improve enforcement of labor regulations.

Requiring good governance from private regulators: what about the rest of us after ESL and ISU?

On January 21, 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued two judgments on European Union (EU) law as a check on the regulatory power of sport governing bodies: European Super League (ESL) and International Skating Union (ISU). These judgments clarify that private entities who wield regulatory power are under EU law subject to what can be characterized as good governance requirements. After examining how ESL and ISU enhance substantive and procedural good governance, this article explores who benefits—and more importantly who does not benefit—from these good governance requirements. While there is some ambiguity in the judgments regarding the scope of the good governance requirements, the article argues that they both can and ought to be applied broadly to all who enjoy rights under EU law.

Breaking the Invisible Chains With Policy: How Insurance Companies Can Help End Human Trafficking in the Hotel Industry

Human trafficking in the hotel industry represents a hidden threat that demands decisive action. Despite public commitments, the sector’s initiatives remain inconsistent, and a wave of lawsuits imposes both financial and reputational risks. Through analysis of relevant legislation and case law, the article demonstrates hotels’ potential liability as venues enabling trafficking. However, inconsistent self-regulation and lawsuits reveal limited progress. The authors advocate for insurance companies to play a pivotal role in combatting human trafficking in the hotel industry by strategically adjusting coverage provisions. They trace the historical influence of insurers on the trajectory of slavery when 18th-century British insurers’ actions contributed to the rise of abolitionism and argue that similar private regulation today can incentivize hotels’ proactive measures against trafficking. The article proposes that insurers possess diverse tools, including exclusions, premium adjustments, auditing, and loss prevention, to compel action rather than complacency. Mandated self-insured retentions can also hold hotels financially accountable for their negligence. However, relying solely on pricing alterations faces challenges due to market competition and inconsistent judicial rulings on liability exclusions. Ultimately, addressing this complex issue requires a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach. Government fines and prosecutions can further incentivize self-disclosure and cooperation, while publicized settlements can promote transparency and empower consumers to make informed choices for hotel venues. This combined framework can transition hotels from passive enablers to active contributors in the fight against human trafficking, fulfilling their duty of care and catalyzing meaningful progress against human exploitation.

Building resilience in cybersecurity: An artificial lab approach

AbstractBased on classical contagion models we introduce an artificial cyber lab: the digital twin of a complex cyber system in which possible cyber resilience measures may be implemented and tested. Using the lab, in numerical case studies, we identify two classes of measures to control systemic cyber risks: security‐ and topology‐based interventions. We discuss the implications of our findings on selected real‐world cybersecurity measures currently applied in the insurance and regulation practice or under discussion for future cyber risk control. To this end, we provide a brief overview of the current cybersecurity regulation and emphasize the role of insurance companies as private regulators. Moreover, from an insurance point of view, we provide first attempts to design systemic cyber risk obligations and to measure the systemic risk contribution of individual policyholders.

An Evaluation of The Theory of Abuse of Rights: Between Sharia and Civil Law a Comparative and Analytical Study

Purpose: This research aims to show how Egyptian and Qatari legislators codify the “abuse of rights” theory and compare it with Islamic law. This is done to correct the defects and deficiencies in the Egyptian and Qatari legal texts. Although the Arab laws are considered among the first laws that adopted this theory, they did not establish private regulation for this theory in their legal rules. Instead, they copied French civil law, which created a conflict between Islamic jurisprudential rules and the legal texts. Methodology: This Article has been written using two methodologies to find answers to the fundamental questions raised by this Article. The first methodology analyzes the legal texts that regulate the theory of Abuse of Rights in Egyptian and Qatari laws. In contrast, the second one is based on comparing the legal texts with Islamic jurisprudential rules. Findings: In the end, we concluded that the theory of “abuse of rights” was stipulated in the Egyptian and Qatari Civil Codes, and judicial rulings established the application of this theory. However, Article (5) of the Egyptian Civil Code and Article (63) of the Qatari Civil Code do not involve this theory. On the other hand, the general texts in Mecelle have organized this theory better and more accurately. Originality: The originality of this Article lies in the fact that it analyzed the position of the Egyptian and Qatari legal texts and commented on the judicial provisions issued by the Egyptian and Qatari courts of Cassation and the Arab courts, and the opinions of civil law jurists related to “abuse of the right.” Moreover, it criticized these texts and highlighted aspects of their deficiencies in comparison with the jurisprudential rules extracted from Islamic law.

Novelty and the demand for private regulation: Evidence from data privacy governance

AbstractPrivate regulations are often presented as low-cost and flexible institutions that can act as policy incubators. In this article, I question under which conditions they go beyond legal compliance and experiment with new rules. Based on a content analysis of 126 data privacy regulations adopted between 1995 and 2016 in the European Union and the United States and thirty-five semistructured interviews, I show that most private regulations include no regulatory novelties. By disaggregating the temporal and spatial distribution of the few novelties, I add nuance to this overall finding and show that private regulations adopted in the United States before 2000 experimented more than others. I argue that this variation reflects the different demands for private regulation in the two jurisdictions and their evolution over time. In the European Union, the early adoption of privacy laws led public regulators and businesses to look for private regulations to reduce transaction costs and thus limited their interest in experimenting with new requirements. In the United States, businesses hoped to gain a first-mover advantage by including new data privacy rules in their private regulations. However, the growing use of private regulations to ease transnational data flows also led to their use as tools to reduce transaction costs.

Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains: Problems, Progress, and Prospects

Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains: Problems, Progress, and Prospects

Hardening corporate accountability in commodity supply chains under the European Union Deforestation Regulation

AbstractThe European Union (EU) has recently introduced the Deforestation Regulation to close regulatory gaps in the sustainability and legality of global forest and agricultural commodity supply chains. We analyze this regulatory policy change by drawing on accountability scholarship and institutionalist theories of regulation. Our results show that the Regulation aims to enhance corporate accountability mechanisms through mostly state‐based hard regulation of commodity supply chains, reducing the role of market incentives and private regulation. This policy change is found to be the result of strategic policy‐oriented learning from perceived accountability failures of existing soft market‐based instruments, voluntary trade agreements, and experience with market‐correcting EU timber legality trade rules in a politically favorable context. The institutionalization of new forest‐risk commodity supply chain accountability norms in new EU trade rules would, by design, harden foreign corporate accountability for negative socio‐environmental externalities. However, the de‐facto hardening will depend on the final regulatory design, acceptance, compliance, implementation, enforcement improvements, and avoidance of leakage effects.

Global Finance and the Anthropocene: Regulatory Shifts and Prospective Effects

Financial institutions must play their part in the fight against climate change. In this context, the concept of the Anthropocene becomes relevant for securities markets via terms such as sustainable finance and ESG. These terms are now a core issue for securities regulators around the world. Lack of clarity and standardized disclosure both across and within jurisdictions make the analysis of and comparison between financial products extremely difficult. Investors’ demand for green products exacerbates the need for standardization. Against this backdrop, financial institutions face two hurdles. First, how to properly assess their in-house financing activities. Second, how to guide investors in their investment decisions. The article shows that, due to the increasing complexity and political importance of green finance, we are witnessing a double, simultaneous shift. First, from transnational private regulation to domestic regulatory law, with the EU in the driver’s seat. Second, towards transnational supervisory standards, adopted by IOSCO. Anthropocene, sustainable finance, ESG, IOSCO, transnational securities regulation, Brussels effect, European green deal, green taxonomy, ESMA, EBA

Beyond audit: the regulatory legitimacy of multi-stakeholder initiatives in the apparel sector

ABSTRACT This article is about multi-stakeholder initiatives that seek to regulate the human rights impacts of global apparel supply chains (Apparel MSIs). MSIs aim to improve human rights for millions of apparel workers worldwide, but after two decades they show little evidence of such improvement. Civil society critics argue that MSIs are an ineffective, unreformable model of private regulation. This article contends that a particularly pressing issue facing Apparel MSIs is the manner in which they seek to control their targets of regulation and ensure regulatory compliance. Most Apparel MSIs rely predominantly on social audit to monitor and ensure compliance with human rights standards. Yet there is now a strong body of evidence showing that social audit is an inherently flawed tool that is not sufficiently powerful to implement meaningful and consistent change. Accordingly, this article argues that Apparel MSIs must urgently move beyond social audit as a regulatory technique. They must instead pay attention to power relations and complex political contexts, amplify the voice of workers and harness complementarity between public and private regulation. Apparel MSIs must transform to improve effectiveness, preserve legitimacy and realise their ultimate aim of improving human rights outcomes for apparel sector workers.

Governance in Colombian food retail: a case study

ABSTRACT We characterized three food retail models that coexist in Colombia: corporate, traditional, and alternative, and investigated the governance within each model in terms of regulation and transparency through a case study. We established the geographic density of the three models and found that in Colombia, the corporate model is widespread; the traditional model has low concentration, but a high presence; and the alternative model has a growing albeit low presence. Through our case study we found that these models have different behaviors in their core production, distribution activities, and forms of governance. Even though private regulation prevails in the corporate and traditional models, the traditional model contains specific characteristics of public regulation, while the alternative model is grounded on social regulation.