As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, our lives are increasingly influenced by decisions made outside our national constituencies. Today, government actions are likely to affect many people who never participated in elections in which the government in question ran for office.
This applies to various policy areas, but seems especially true in the financial sphere. As the financial crisis in the late 2000’s has shown, the absence of governmental oversight regarding financial activities in a country can have consequences far beyond its borders. One mechanism to address this is transnational peer review of financial regulators. Such peer review aims to enable supervisory convergence and dissemination of best practices. Yet, mechanisms of transnational governance themselves are often claimed to undermine democracy by giving decision-making power to experts and thereby taking it out of the hands of publicly elected officials. In this conversation, Yane Svetiev analyzes processes of peer review of financial regulators – both their peril and their promise.
Yane Svetiev is Chair in Market Regulation and Private Law at the Law School of the University of Sydney, Australia.
The interview was conducted by Konsatntin Kipp. Alina Young edited the audio file.
