International Signals: The Political Dimension of International Competition Law Harmonization (original) (raw)

The article, written jointly by a law professor and political science professor, endeavors to explain why the United States is particularly resistant to various efforts at international harmonization of antitrust law. While others have wrangled with this question over the years, none has assessed the question from within the broader political framework in which all relations between nations exist. Our article endeavors to fill this intellectual gap.Existing efforts to describe or explain the lack of international harmonization have generally focused on the direct economic effects, and the narrow political difficulties, of the harmonization of competition laws through certain international mechanisms, most notably the WTO and the OECD. Largely absent in these accounts is a background theory of international politics against which the practicalities – and the ultimate desirability – of international competition law harmonization can be assessed. Our article presents such a theory. It ...