[Regulation] A European Century After All?

The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World. By Anu Bradford. Oxford University Press (OUP); 424 pages; $25.99.

Editor's note — this book review featured in the summer 2020 issue of the Cato Institute's Regulation magazine. Read the entire piece here.

As the shape of regulation goes, America and the EU aren’t all that different — both are customs unions with a single trade policy, with unimpeded commerce within them hinging on a large degree of internal regulatory harmonization. The extent to which individual (member) states can autonomously enact regulations is limited in both cases — by the federal government’s constitutional power to regulate inter-state commerce in the US, and by foundational treaties in the EU that codify the so-called “single market”.

From that similar foundation, what little state-level regulation is allowed for in either case has followed opposite pathways in the past half century. It has turned increasingly divergent within the US — with liberal states led by Sacramento blazing new regulatory trails in the environment and digital privacy through the “California effect”, a term coined by Berkeley’s Kenneth Vogel in 1999, while others seek to attract jobs and investment by undercutting federal standards, a mirror force called “Delaware effect”. Meanwhile, the EU has relentlessly pushed for “ever-closer” regulatory union.

Continue reading the entire piece here.