Rule‐Intermediaries in Action: How State and Business Stakeholders Influence the Meaning of Consumer Rights in Regulatory Governance Arrangements

Abstract

The boundaries between public and private actors are increasingly blurred via regulatory governance arrangements and the contracting out of rights enforcement to private organizations. Regulation and governance scholars have not gained enough empirical leverage on how state actors, private organizations, and civil society groups influence the meaning of legal rules in regulatory governance arrangements that they participate in. Drawing from participant observation at consumer law conferences and interviews with stakeholders, my empirical data suggest that consumer rights and, in fact, consumer law, mean different things to different stakeholders tasked with adjudicating consumer rights. Rights afforded consumers who purchase warranties are now largely contingent on first using alternative dispute resolution structures, some created and operated by private organizations with soft state oversight and others run by stakeholders but with greater state oversight and involvement. Using new institutional sociology and regulatory governance theories, I find that stakeholders involved in overseeing and administering these dispute resolution systems filter the meaning of consumer rights through competing business and consumer logics. Because consumer laws mean different things to stakeholders tasked with adjudicating consumer rights, two different rights regimes simultaneously exist in this field. I conclude that how rule‐intermediaries administering private and state‐run dispute resolution systems conceptualize what consumer laws mean in action may have implications for regulatory governance and more broadly, consumers' access to justice.

How Legal Intermediaries Facilitate or Inhibit Social Change

“…Empirical studies demonstrate that institutional logics co-exist and co-evolve over time (Dunn & Jones, 2010) while often one institutionalized or dominant logic is replaced or abandoned for a new dominant logic (Haveman & Rao, 1997;Thornton & Ocasio, 1999;Thornton, 2002;Lounsbury, 2002;Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003). Moreover, field actors often mobilize multiple logics within organizational fields (McPherson & Sauder, 2013;Talesh, 2015c).…”

“…Managerial logics can be in contestation with logics or work in complimentary ways (Talesh, 2015a). Moreover, managerial, risk, labor or consumer conceptions of law shape the way public legal institutions such as legislatures (Talesh 2009(Talesh , 2014Pélisse, 2009), courts (Edelman et al, 1999;Edelman, 2005Edelman, , 2007, regulatory agencies (Talesh, 2012(Talesh, , 2015c and arbitration forums (Talesh, 2012) understand law and compliance.…”

Legal Intermediaries: How Insurance Companies Construct the Meaning of Compliance with Antidiscrimination Laws

“…The insurance field acts as a legal intermediary between what civil rights laws say in cases and statutes and how civil rights are implemented and enforced by employers (cf. Talesh ). While not many people dispute that the civil rights revolution produced significant results, there is sharp disagreement over the extent to which some employees continue to encounter discrimination and what, if anything, the law can do about it.…”

Compliance Dynamism: Capturing the Polynormative and Situational Nature of Business Responses to Law

“…This is a fundamental critique on studies that seek to study compliance by looking at whether particular behavior conforms with a particular legal norm (Parker and Nielsen 2009a). In response to this critique, a body of qualitative studies have focused on how compliance processes shape the meaning of law (Talesh 2009(Talesh , 2015Edelman et al 1991a;Edelman and Talesh 2011;Lange 1999). And while this is a very important question, it does move away from the behavior itself and the way through which the law may or may not shape behavior.…”