ABSTRACT

The debate surrounding the nature and role of competition law and policy, outlined in Chapter 1, has both a national and international perspective. At the national level, there have always been advocates of laissez-faire market economics whose faith in free markets leads to a distrust of regulatory competition authorities. These ideas are based on the concept of economic freedom and the limitation of

Governmental intervention. The implications for competition policy will depend to a great extent on any national system’s historical, political and legal culture and the attitude towards markets and the role of the State.1 Inevitably, therefore, competition law and policy reflects the prevailing political ideology. For instance, particularly in the United States, the debate over the last 40 years between the Chicago and Harvard schools generally mirrors the wider political debate on intervention or freedom of the market, although not all Harvard scholars were particularly interventionist and even most Chicago school proponents have agreed that some form of control over naked horizontal cartels is required. Accordingly, the debate in competition law has tended to concern the degree of intervention which is deemed appropriate. Recent discussion in politics in the UK and US, particularly by Prime Minister Blair, has focused on a ‘third way’ in politics between capitalism/free markets and the State economy. Although this ‘third way’ may in fact be little more than the traditional concept of the mixed economy, it may shed light on recent developments in competition/antitrust economic analysis which have tended to move away from the Chicago/Harvard dichotomy and look for practical economic theories such as those found in industrial economics.2