Regulating Technology: International Harmonization and Local Realities

Examining the regulation of technologies, this book explores how the drive to harmonize regulatory policies across the world is at odds with the increasingly diverse local settings in which they are implemented. The authors use a 'framings' approach that starts with the concerns and experiences of technology users and works 'upwards' in order to examine how best to improve regulation.

The book centres around two in-depth case study topics: regulation of transgenic cotton seed and regulation of antibiotics, compared across situations in China and Argentina. The authors examine how high-level initiatives in regulatory harmonization and regulatory capacity building compare with national policies, day-to-day enforcement realities on the ground, and with the way poorer users experience these technologies. Through these studies the authors offer ways to rethink regulation in order to realign the power and politics at play and create more effective regulation for technology users around the world.

Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Patrick van Zwanenberg, Adrian Ely and Adrian Smith are researchers at SPRU (Science & Technology Policy Research) and members of the STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability), both at the University of Sussex, UK