Article6 min read
The Quiet Politics of Standards
How technical standard-setting shapes markets long before regulators arrive.
- Regulation
- Political Economy
Standards are easy to overlook. They are technical, dull, and rarely make headlines. Yet the organisations that set them exercise a quiet form of governance, structuring competition and locking in incumbents.
Drawing on cases from data privacy to sustainable finance, this article argues that standard-setting deserves the same scrutiny that scholars devote to formal regulation.