Horizontal Transformations in Administrative Norms and Procedures: An Introduction

This introduction explores the underlying question addressed in each of the contributions to this special issue: what impact does the use of general administrative governance principles and processes by hybrid and transnational private regulatory bodies have on ‘transnational administrative law doctrine’? The importance of this inquiry arises out of the growing role that such regulatory bodies play, despite their lack of formal competence, in introducing principles and procedures of general administrative nature into their respective sector. The hypothesis is that these ‘horizontal’ – due both to the absence of formal hierarchy as well as their cross-sector applicability – administrative norms and procedures undergo transformations as the regulatory bodies formulate them for their particular fields. By pursuing this hypothesis across a number of different case studies, the contributions to this special issue develop both transnational private regulation and global administrative law scholarship by mapping normative transformations that occur in their mutual intersections.