Will Nation States Reassert Their Sovereignty over the Platform Economy?

Aware of the power of platform firms and the risks of the platform economy, governments are reconsidering the dominant laissez faire approach in favour of strategies that regulate the power of platform firms. transnational dynamics play an important role in shaping emerging national regimes, but we argue that governments are also influenced by three factors that operate primarily at domestic level: the agency of platform firms, the impact of first-mover US platforms, and domestic politics. We illustrate our approach through an analysis of the trajectories and regulatory measures of four economies: the US, the EU, China, and India. As governance efforts expand to emerging technologies such as AI, our analysis presages broader changes to the structure of what was, with a few important exceptions, a relatively borderless global online economy.

Angela García Calvo is Assistant Professor in International Business and Strategy at the University of Reading and a Visiting Researcher at the WZB. Her research explores the mechanisms behind processes of structural transformation. Her work concentrates on the role of business-government relations, industrial policy, and the transformative power of technology.

Martin Kenney is Distinguished Professor at UC, Davis and Co-Director at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. His research seeks to understand the mechanisms by which the cutting-edge of the capitalist political economic system evolves. A particular interest is the way entrepreneurs develop and commercialize new technologies that build new industries and reorganize existing ones.

John Zysman is Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley and co-founder/co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Zysman’s ongoing work covers the implications of platforms and intelligent tools for work, entrepreneurship, and international competition,  and the economic challenges and opportunities of climate change and the green economy.

The event is part of the Seminar Series “Platform Politics and Policy”.

Researchers from outside the WZB who would like to attend may email the organizer, robert.gorwa [at] wzb.eu, to be put onto the seminar series mailing list.