Varieties of cooperation: the domestic institutional roots of global governance

This article develops a domestic institutional explanation for the growing institutional diversity in global economic governance. Transgovernmental networks linking domestic regulatory agencies have emerged in a number of areas alongside more conventional cooperation based on international organisations and regimes. At the same time, the number and scope of private self-regulatory schemes at the international level has markedly increased. While rich literatures have developed around each of these three governance cluster, less attention has been paid to the critical questions why, where, and when we are most likely to see one type of governance as opposed to another. The article argues that broad observable patterns of global governance result from specific configurations of domestic institutional variables in leading markets against the backdrop of the dynamics of market globalisation. Empirical evidence from case studies of global governance in the fields of securities, Internet domain names, intellectual property, and hedge funds broadly support the argument.