cooperation in an industry. How a domestic market is regulated, and especially by whom, affects
who can leverage domestic market access in pursuit of a favorable transnational regulatory
regime. Hence, the organization of domestic market regulation determines the constitutive actors
of nascent international regulatory cooperation.
A great deal of empirical variation exists in the regulation of transnational markets for
information goods.
protection, states are working through intergovernmental fora such as the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Group of Eight (G-8), or
international organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), to harmonize existing
rules or develop new frameworks. In contrast, networks of domestic regulatory authorities play
the leading role in the regulation of transnational securities, insurance, and personal information
markets. Still other markets – most notably the one for Internet domain names – are regulated by
private sector self-regulation. Each empirical cluster of regulatory cooperation can be associated
with a distinct theoretical literature. Cooperation through intergovernmental organizations is
most consistent with the conventional, state-centric image of international cooperation in
International Relations (IR). In response to an increasing amount of regulatory cooperation that
does not fit comfortably with the conventional perspective, two other literatures have emerged in
recent years. One, spearheaded primarily by international legal scholars, touts the prominence of
institutionalized cross-border cooperation among regulatory agencies, courts, and law
enforcement communities. A second, led by scholars with an interest in non-state actors, has
called attention to growing international business and non-governmental organization (NGO)
efforts to supply self-regulatory frameworks for transnational markets.
2
Information, quite simply, is anything that can be digitized. See Shapiro and Varian 1999, p.3. Information goods
can thus be defined as goods and services that can be expressed and communicated in digital form.
3
Convention