Louis D. Brandeis and the Making of Regulated Competition, 1900–1932

Abstract

This book provides an innovative interpretation of industrialization and statebuilding in the United States. Whereas most scholars cast the politics of industrialization in the progressive era as a narrow choice between breaking up and regulating the large corporation, Berk reveals a third way: regulated competition. In this framework, the government steered economic development away from concentrated power by channeling competition from predation to improvements in products and production processes. Louis Brandeis conceptualized regulated competition and introduced it into public debate. Political entrepreneurs in Congress enacted many of Brandeis's proposals into law. The Federal Trade Commission enlisted business and professional associations to make it workable. The commercial printing industry showed how it could succeed. And 30 percent of manufacturing industries used it to improve economic performance. In order to make sense of regulated competition, Berk provides an original theory of institutions he calls 'creative syncretism'.

Customer engagement in UK water regulation: towards a collaborative regulatory state?

“…Sabel and Zeitlin, 2008). Similarly, 'creative syncretism' has been used to define how policy entrepreneurs make creative use of different resources to engage with institutional complementarities (Berk 2009). A third strain stresses the supposed limitations of 'hierarchy'; accordingly, third party engagement facilitates informationgathering, collaborative relationships supports compliance and participation enhances the quality and acceptance of regulatory standards (Braithwaite, 2006;Levi-Faur, 2005;Levi-Faur and Jordana, 2004;Scott, 2004).…”

La politique de concurrence comme levier de la politique industrielle dans la France de l’après-guerre

“…En Europe, les mouvements planistes de l'entre-deux-guerres ou les travaux du Groupe X-Crise dans les années trente, notamment avec la conférence d'Auguste Detoeuf (1936) sur la fin du libéralisme attestent de cette tendance. Aux Etats-Unis, les arguments de Louis Brandeis sur la concurrence coordonnée (Berk, 2012) et plus tard la politique mise en oeuvre par l'administration Roosevelt dans le cadre du Premier New Deal avec le National Industrial Recovery Act relevaient de la même logique (Bougette et al, 2015). Si le NIRA ne revenait aucunement en une cartellisation à l'allemande, il induisait néanmoins une régulation des prix et des salaires pratiqués par les entreprises dans le cadre de « codes de concurrence loyale » (Barjot et Schröter, 2013).…”

Rorty, Addams, and Social Hope

“…For example, we might want to help people in the community but we do not have a set of habits that will help us to act. We are stuck and begin to experiment, making space for contingency in a process of "creative syncretism" [52,53]. Hans Joas [54], a pragmatist who has much in common with Rorty on ideas concerning the generation of values through experience, sees this creative action as lacking a specific telos.…”