10 - Law and legitimacy in networked governance

Summary

As the previous chapters have shown, the law and lawyers have played a key part in creating the concepts and institutional forms of corporate capitalism in the past century and a half. Legalization has been playing an equally central role especially in the recent decades in forming the institutions of the new global governance. This chapter will evaluate some of the main theories and debates about this role of law, and put forward my own perspective, in the light of the accounts and analyses of the previous chapters of this book.

The general argument is that what has been constructed is a corporatist economy, in which highly socialized systems of economic activity are managed in forms which allow private control and appropriation, yet are very different from those of the ‘market economy’ envisaged by classical liberal philosophy and political economy. Although the state and the economy appear as separate spheres, they are intricately interrelated in many ways, especially in the definition and allocation of property rights, and in extensive state support and interventions determining investment and profit rates. Working at the interface of the public and private in mediating social action and conflict, lawyers have played a key role in constructing corporatist capitalism, and are central to its governance and legitimation. This is also due to lawyers' techniques and practices of formulating and interpreting concepts and norms which are inherently malleable and indeterminate, and provide the flexibility to manage the complex interactions of private and public.