Analysing the EU’s global regulatory actorness and influence : a China case.

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to contribute to the discussion of the European Union’s (EU) global regulatory actorness and what it means to the current world. It argues that the EU has transcended the role of an influential trader and evolved into a regulatory power. The thesis ventures to refine the concept of the EU’s regulatory power and the theoretical framework explaining the EU’s global regulatory actorness, which are arguably limited in the research field. To understand the EU’s global regulatory influence and gauge its limit, an in-depth case study on the impact of EU internal rules on third-country actors is structured. The case selected is the influence of EU market-related environmental legislation on local manufacturers in China. The logic behind the case selection is that the case forms a crucial most-likely case where the EU’s transnational regulation is most likely to succeed with that set of rules on those particular types of actors and in that particular place. If EU market-related environmental legislation, a well-designed set of EU rules, does not influence a considerable number of stakeholders in its top trade partner (even its competitor-rival, yet -partner China), which is more likely to be susceptible to EU influence, it is very unlikely to succeed elsewhere. In this way, a most-likely case is applied as a disconfirmatory reference to test the hypothesis that the influence of EU internal rules on its third-country trade partners (such as China) is significant.

The case-study findings confirm the neoliberal assumption that the EU’s transnational regulation is driven by the market mechanism, albeit with a minor alteration concerning the role cross-border supply chains play. It is found that the external impact of EU regulation does not take place in a vacuum, and the cross-border supply chains act as a medium of the externalisation of EU internal rules.