Bartering Rationality in Regulation

Abstract

Legal powers given to administrative agencies are frequently used as bargaining chips in negotiations between government and business. This paper develops a typology that helps to explain the empirical variety of such bartering. Inquiring into the historical development of bartering, the article shows that what is new is not the practice of but the discourse about bartering. The discourse legitimates bartering with legal powers. This, in turn, will reshape practice, affecting the bargaining positions of the parties, the mode of law-making, the role of third parties and the public, and the potential of the law to induce social change.