On the Public-Law Character of Competition Law: A Lesson from Asian Capitalism

This article argues that competition law is best seen as a form of public law – ‘the law that governs the governing of the state – and not as simply a form of private market regulation. It uses the experiences of ‘Asian capitalism’ to show how capitalist economies are in fact much more variegated than the orthodox model of competition law presumes, and that this demands a form of regulation that is innately political rather than simply technical. Orthodox competition regimes address this complexity by segregating non-standard capitalisms into alternative doctrinal jurisprudences, but this renders conceptually invisible the innately political balancing that these different forms of capitalism, and their different dynamics of competition, require and provoke. Recognizing that competition law is ultimately a form of public law allows us to visualize this inevitable process of political balancing, and thereby begin to address the issues it raises.