Regulators without borders? Latin American labour inspectors in transnational context

Abstract

The domestic bases of trans-governmental regulatory networks are controversial. While rational choice accounts expect insecure regulators to join larger networks that promise to bolster and justify their authority back home, public interest accounts expect independent regulators to join smaller networks populated by like-minded and informative peers. Are regulatory networks more likely to attract self-aggrandizing servants of insecure agencies or public-spirited representatives of their independent counterparts? What are the implications for network size and orientation? I address these questions by examining the regulators who administer labour and employment law in Latin America and find that, in keeping with the public interest account, they are more likely to go abroad when they are independent bureaucrats than when they are vulnerable to political pressure, and less likely to join larger networks of powerful allies than to teach and learn from their Iberian and Latin American peers. The results suggest that trans-governmental networks rest on Weberian foundations – themselves mediated by linguistic, cultural, and historical factors – that contribute to the reproduction of a multipolar regulatory world.