Abstract

Abstract:

This article seeks to provide a theoretical account of how management-based regulation (MBR), a new regulatory style used by many global regulators, affects its targets. The article centers on a case study. It introduces agencement theory as the theoretical heuristic to inform the analysis of a global, large-scale MBR scheme, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Program (ICAAP). In agencement theory, agency is understood in a neomaterialist frame. The core idea is that an actor’s actions are determined by the material assemblage that constitutes her. The agencement heuristic allows ICAAP to be conceptualized as a regulatory agencement scheme. The scheme seeks to affect its targets—banks—by choreographing and shaping the socio-technical agencement processes under which the banks emerge as actors capable of cognizing and acting on risks. Consequently, the impact of MBR is mediated through actor construction. Regulation fosters actors whose socio-technical makeup leads them to have particular behavioral proclivities. The article also discusses the philosophical implications of moving to regulatory agencement and the schemes relationship to neoliberal regulation.

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