Remote Control: TPP’s Administrative Law Requirements as Megaregulation

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) includes many and varied administrative law obligations for the parties’ domestic regulation and administration which form an integral part of its megaregulation project. These treaty requirements for regulatory procedures operate as instruments of transnational remote control by empowering private actors to use the procedures to pursue and defend their interests in other states. To create this remote control, TPP uses rules and structures for regulatory decision-making that reflect a US understanding of administrative law and its implicit regulatory capitalist model for the structuring of state–market relations. To explain how remote control works, we synthesize McNollgast’s conception of regulatory procedures in the purely domestic context as instruments of political control and Putnam’s theorization of international treaty negotiations as a two-level game. We show how procedural obligations in TPP are designed to stack the deck to favor certain interests—business firms rather than environmental and social interests—and why treaty negotiators may find it easier to agree on procedures than on substantive commitments.