7 - Reimagining Regulation

Summary

Any new account of privacy, especially one with the unusual combination of elements as is presented here, will require a conducive institutional environment. The environment proposed here is based on a new notion of regulation, in the broad sense of social control rather than the narrower sense of subsidiary legislation and despite the successes claimed for that latter form. In this broad sense, present regulation derives from the spread of power from sovereign institutions as means by which that sovereign power is transformed but still empowered and which can be seen in such shapes as biopower and the algorithmic determinism of human behaviour. The presently dominant form of regulation, responsive regulation, is best seen as mythological, especially through the manner in which it is informed by the republicanism of Pettit. In response, the new sense of regulation as social control focuses on the reimagining of institutions and the promotion of the existential interests of the individual to centre-stage. This is the reverse of current priorities.