ABSTRACT
My primary aim in this chapter is to make an argument that certain complexes of non-judicial institutions, procedures and techniques bear important analogies with the role of legal institutions in fostering global capitalism. I want to suggest that these sites of ‘economic adjudication’ are key to the dynamics of contemporary regulatory politics, and in particular to the trajectory of the increasingly fractious tensions between the ‘social’ and ‘economic’ faces of an increasingly interdependent global economy. At the same time, I want to explore these bureaucratic regulatory institutions specifically as incipient modes of legality, so that the exploration is essentially one concerning the role of law in political economy.1
