Work-in-progress

This article advances policy paradigm theory by investigating when paradigms are more rigid, constraining alternative perspectives and policy options, and when instead they are more flexible, allowing actors to overcome paradigmatic restrictions and differences. Departing from extant theories, I suggest that paradigmatic flexibility and rigidity develop within the policy-making process, by the types of policy changes proposed, and the types of framing strategies policy actors employ to support their proposals. Thus, paradigms can have both rigid and flexible modes and exert different influences over policy decisions. I illustrate this theory by comparatively analyzing the political debates over four proposals to revise the U.S. antitrust (competition) policies in the 1970s. I find that new policy goal proposals tend to radicalize paradigmatic differences, while policy instrument proposals allow paradigmatic bricolage and mixing. This suggests that policy instrument changes can be gateways to paradigm changes in the long run.

This article examines competition (anti-trust) rule variations in developing countries using the cases of Turkey and Mexico. Turkish and Mexican competition rules closely imitate the European and American ones, but also diverge from them significantly, in the books and in practice. Instead of resource limitations, political interventions, and local paradigms, this divergence is created by the domestic varieties of capitalism, forcing competition laws to adapt to the local state investment and juridical review institutions. In Turkey, the strength of state investments prevented the legislation of state aid rules, while in Mexico the weakness of the state led to their adoption. In Turkey, the state-leaning jurisprudence of administrative courts allowed for an expansive enforcement of anti-monopoly rules, while in Mexico the corporate-leaning constitutional review inhibited their development. These findings demonstrate how globally diffused laws adapt to local varieties of capitalism, creating legal dissimilarities in the Global South.

Economic globalization creates new professional fields by diffusing Western economic, political, and social institutions to the Global South. However, these professionals have different levels of access to the professional resources globalization offers, such as higher education in a Western country, fluency in a Western language, or affiliation with international professional organizations. Relying on interviews with competition law consultants in Turkey and Mexico, this paper investigates how unequal access to international legal education and networking resources create income and status hierarchies within emerging professional fields in the Global South. It also evaluates whether these hierarchies are an impediment over the maturation of legal professions in the Global South by preventing the entry of new members and the creation of unifying professional norms.