Competing Architectures for Regulatory and Competition Law Governance

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the policy choices and trends related to the institutional design of competition law and regulatory enforcement. It focuses on the different architectures that seek to reconcile and bring together the tools used to regulate the behaviour of undertakings ex ante and to sanction eventual abuses ex post. These architectures are becoming ever more sophisticated, as both the language and the goals of regulation and competition law reach new levels of convergence. While the focal point of the analysis will be on regulatory structures developed in the EU, references to other jurisdictions will be made wherever non-EU examples illustrate particular trends in the shaping of agency structures.