Consumer protection in a normative context: the building blocks of a consumer citizenship practice

Bringing complexity and convergence governance to consumer policy

“…A network is a complex arrangement of interconnecting sectors that interact to exchange, develop, and evolve. The notion of ‘governance is concerned with relationships, process networks and organization of collective action’ (Davies, , p. 133), necessitating respect for network complexities . Governance is presumed to have greater problem‐solving capacities than the government approach.…”

“…Nalinakumari and MacLean () affirmed the key roles that civil society and business play in the governance process. Marsden () asserted that the three sectors’ roles have been changing since the mid‐1990s, with the consumer sector now called the consumer‐citizen sector (Bevir & Trentmann, ; Davies, ; Reisch, ), and the business sector often framed as corporate citizens (Bulloch et al, ).…”

“…In concert with the complex embeddedness of consumer policies, a related concern is ‘how multi‐level, eventually [supranational and] transnational consumer policy governance ideally should be designed and how it could be put into power’ (Reisch et al, , p. 5) (see Table ). Supra means transcending established national boundaries or spheres of interest (Davies, ). To that end, this paper develops the position that governance in the consumer policy arena needs to acknowledge and accommodate complexity , Latin complectere , ‘combination’ (Harper, ).…”