National varieties of standardization: A comparative study of emergence, development and change in national standardization systems

Despite their economic relevance, researchers have all but ignored the study of product standards and standardization systems for much of the past century. In recent years, however, interest in product standards has picked up quite noticeably as more and more economic research pointed to the economic significance of standards, and as national and international standardization institutions have increasingly developed into politically contested spaces in which competing actors vie for influence and control.; This study contributes to the developing debate on the economic and political importance of product standards. The study offers two central findings: First, a contextualized analysis of the emergence of national economic institutions that focuses on institutional complementarities and comparative institutional advantage constitutes the most suitable approach to explaining variation in standardization institutions across nations. The study shows that diverging anti-trust traditions as well as different approaches to product liability and negligence have had a shaping influence on the development of standardization institutions and practices in both the US and Germany.; Second, the study suggests that parsimonious approaches to explaining the dynamics and pathways of domestic institutional change in response to external pressures (i.e. economic globalization) are incomplete and potentially misleading. The study of adjustment and change in the European and American standardization systems demonstrates that the direction and speed of change does not simply depend only on the mediating impact of institutions but also on the way in which external pressures can have a direct impact on domestic politics of reform. Contrary to what convergence theorists would predict, the study shows that institutional factors do indeed matter in determining the scope and direction of domestic adaptation and change in response to external pressures. Domestic institutions do not adjust instantaneously and without cost to external pressures, as both the study of reform in the American standardization system as well as the process of European integration in the product standardization arena convincingly demonstrate. While institutions have a mediating effect, however, it would be wrong to conclude that co-convergence is the necessary consequence. In sum, the study suggests that attempts at developing parsimonious theories of institutional development and change should be considered with a healthy degree of skepticism. More often than not, institutional change is slow-moving and non-linear and shaped by so many contingent factors and subjective perceptions that it is hardly possible to advance a coherent, parsimonious theory of institutional development. This does not imply that there are no regularities in institutional effects, emanating from phenomena such as path-dependence and increasing returns to scale. However, there is no appropriate substitute for detailed empirical research of instances of institutional change, case by case.