Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
Legal powers given to administrative agencies are frequently used as bargaining chips in negotiations between government and business. This paper develops a typology that helps to explain the empirical variety of such bartering. Inquiring into the historical development of bartering, the article shows that what is new is not the practice of but the discourse about bartering. The discourse legitimates bartering with legal powers. This, in turn, will reshape practice, affecting the bargaining positions of the parties, the mode of law-making, the role of third parties and the public, and the potential of the law to induce social change.
I am grateful to Stephen Diamond, Robert Kagan, Karlheinz Ladeur, Norbert Reich, Christopher Stone, and David Trubek for providing me with helpful suggestions for revisions in earlier drafts of this paper. Richard Lempert put a tremendous amount of time and skill into editorial work. He translated my ponderous English into what sounds to me like most elegant prose and helped to clarify and condense my arguments. Financial support by the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk enabled me to spend three months in the stimulating atmospheres of the University of Wisconsin Law School and the Oxford Centre for Socio-legal Studies.