From Trust Busting to Busting Trust: The Unravelling of Antitrust Technocracy in the United States and the European Union
For most of the last century, antitrust law in the United States and the European Union became steadily more technocratic. It was left to specialist lawyers and economists, who applied effects-based tests in the name of consumer welfare. That settlement is now breaking down on both sides of the Atlantic, but the two jurisdictions are moving in seemingly opposite directions.
This presentation draws on Crane's four ideal types of public administration to explain the divergence: progressive technocracy, neoliberal technocracy, populist public administration and political governance. In the United States, antitrust appears to be abandoning neoliberal technocracy for a politicized, progressive model reminiscent of the Roosevelt era. The European Union, with the Digital Markets Act as its emblem, is turning toward progressive technocracy. The DMA is a market-making project that distrusts markets' ability to deliver the outcomes regulators wish to see while concentrating definitional, interpretive and enforcement power in a single expert body.
Despite these differences, both jurisdictions may end up with greater political governance of a field once reserved for technical experts. The presentation closes with a critical examination of that form of governance, and what it might entail.
Speaker bio
Lazar Radic is Assistant Professor of Law at IE University Law School in Madrid and a Senior Scholar at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE). His research focuses on competition law and economics, especially digital markets, the Digital Markets Act and the political economy and philosophy of regulation. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute.