“Victory is hollow if the EU cannot actually entrench regulations into concrete market outcomes." - Interview with Anu Bradford about her book "Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology"
The quickly growing digital landscape has led regulators to pivot quicker than ever to the topic of digital markets and digital regulation. As such, new trends that shape the global market and international affairs have begun to emerge causing scholars, lawmakers, and tech companies to take note of the shifting environment that binds them together.
Professor Anu Bradford dives deeper into her latest book on this topic with Mitchell Rutledge, a student in the MA program for European History, Politics, and Society at the European Institute.
Anu Bradford is a leading scholar on EU and digital regulation and is the Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School. Professor Bradford coined the term the Brussels Effect in her previous book, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World (2020). Her new book Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2023 and has garnered much recognition.
Mitchell Rutledge: At the outset of your writing, what attitude did you have towards the current state of tech regulation, in all three empires that you speak of (US, EU, and China), and now knowing what you know, what attitudes and perceptions do you have for the future state of tech regulation in those three empires?
Anu Bradford: I clearly was observing a different outcome already at the outset. I was witnessing vigorous, ambitious regulatory activity in the EU, the lack of regulation in the US, while also noticing how China was moving very fast from not regulating to just starting to regulate technology. But what I really did not fully appreciate is what explains these differences. What are the values guiding each digital empire? What is the historical context and the origins of these different regulatory approaches? Do they extend across all different kinds of regulations? But then when I delved much deeper into these regulatory regimes, I both got a more complete understanding of why the Europeans regulate and why the Americans have been so reluctant to pursue regulation, including what is holding the US policymakers back even if the attitudes are shifting. I also was able to piece together a much more nuanced story. What was really interesting is that something that at first seemed very clear (my delineation of three models), when you start looking at those models more closely, it's not necessarily that any model is absolute or pure; instead, there are many state-driven features in the US model, there are market-driven features in the Chinese model. And the EU is ultimately rather market-driven as well while moving towards state-driven features. So, ultimately, I felt it was satisfying to spell out that nuance and explain in a more intricate way what the differences and what the similarities are. And then, of course, I asked what those differences mean for the world? What does it mean when these differences collide? Or, to the extent that there's an agreement among the empires, is it possible that we see less contestation?
MR: I think the nuances are exactly one of the things that drew my attention, especially because in the EU with the 27 member states, there's so much nuance to all the regulations. How do you perceive the internal disagreements of the EU, affecting the perception of what you call ‘European values’ concerning the digital realm, and how those are going to develop over the next, 5 to 10 years?
AB: We need to recognize that there are some pan-European commitments and values. Europeans, in general, are more comfortable with regulation than Americans. There is a greater trust in governments and less of a trust in markets, this baseline appreciation of the importance of data privacy, and a discomfort with excessive power of tech companies. There is a set of commonalities that allows me to talk about a European rights-driven model. It’s also interesting how the EU is not homogeneous. There are occasions where I am more troubled by it. For example, the EU's ability to really promote democracy-enhancing regulation is compromised if it cannot hold some of its own member states in check and ensure that they respect the rule of law and democratic institutions – I'm mainly referring to Hungary and, at least until very recently, Poland. At the same time, in many ways, tech regulation involves a lot of tradeoffs. I do not think there is a single framework through which to look at that. Different member states have different priorities and, ultimately, the regulatory fabric becomes richer by incorporating these different priorities. I think that allows the EU not to pursue as extreme regulation. There are those countries that advocate a little bit more market-driven approaches. However, those are checked by countries that feel much more strongly about regulating. I think that is partially the secret why the EU has been so successful in exporting its regulatory model, because those EU-wide compromises already reflect an attempt to overcome differences and come up with a regulatory model that works in countries that do not fully agree and that have different legal cultures and legal institutions.
Read the full interview here.
Interview conducted by Mitchell Rutledge, student in the MA program in European History, Politics, and Society at the European Institute, Columbia University.