Throughout the advanced countries of the world self-regulatory regimes are being introduced. This article suggests that, at least in some contexts, industry self-regulation can be an effective and efficient means of social control that has been largely ignored by economics (which has a focus on individual rather than group behavior) and prematurely discounted by mainstream regulatory theory. The article examines the strengths and to a lesser extent the weaknesses of industry self-regulation from five closely related yet distinct vantage points: mediating institutions; industrial morality; institutionalizing responsibility; institutions responding to external pressure; and the roles of the state and third parties.

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This study explores the development of communitarian regulation in the American chemical industry by focusing on the history and challenges facing Responsible Care, the leading example of regulation by an industry association on the environmental scene today.

This article focuses on the origins and the development of American hospital industry self‐regulation. Drawing on extensive archival research, this article suggests that the American College of Surgeon’s Hospital Standardization Program was closely linked to the American pragmatist tradition. So understood, the Program represents a major milestone in the history of American regulation, perhaps the first self‐regulatory system steeped in pragmatist principles of social ordering, a Progressive‐era model of governance that long ago foreshadowed some of today’s most significant regulatory innovations.

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