International Financial Regulation
Chapter 3 describes the international financial regulatory architecture, providing necessary background for the substantive studies that follow. It gives special attention to the architecture’s two defining aspects: the soft law character of the rules it produces and the fragmentation of rule-making by subsectors. A matrix of forums develops advisory prescriptions for specific financial policy areas. The chapter traces the architecture’s origins and evolution, including how policy-makers and standard-setting organizations dealt with the breakdown of traditional boundaries between markets and subsectors. It provides background on the book’s featured causal variable: international soft law. It also offers an original explanation for the architecture’s key features. The chapter highlights the prominent role of domestic institutional arrangements within the United States and other jurisdictions with important markets for the early development of soft law-creating organizations and establishes the role of contingency, sequence, and endogeneity (with reference to domestic institutions) in the architecture’s evolution.