Date:
Location:
Speaker
Uma Ilavarasan, "Policy by Contract: How the State’s Market Power Governs Regulatory Processes"
Abstract
While existing accounts of the state emphasize its monopolies and its revenue-raising capacity, states spend considerable sums: significant shares of raised revenues are converted through contracts with ostensibly private entities into the technologies and human capital that make up the state’s machinery. Thus, as “consumer-in-chief,” states may coerce the compliance of powerful corporate counterparts, conditioning the receipt of government awards on the implementation of favored policies, as well as low-cost provision. In my dissertation, I define a novel dimension of state power — monopsonistic control — and analyze its origins, uses, and relationship to another governance modality — economy-wide regulation. Under what conditions do states rely primarily on purchasing power to achieve their goals? What logics tie specific objectives to different regulatory strategies? Are force and coercion better understood as substitutes or complements? To answer these questions, I rely on a mixed-methods, comparative case study of the United States and Germany — two major procurers, and two distinct political-economic types. I focus on cybersecurity and privacy policies, and environmental policies. For purposes of theory-building, I employ two methods: in-depth interviews and archival research. To ultimately theory-test, I will field original, cross-country surveys of bureaucrats and survey-experiments of firms in sectors with different hypothesized levels of monopsonistic control.