Regulatory Capture Civil Society Global Finance In Derivative Regulation

The paper analyses the divergent outcomes of post-crisis derivative regulation in Europe. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, most regulatory issues only represent incremental changes of existing practices and incentives, tweaking rather than reforming the financial system and, mostly, these regulations have been captured by the financial industry. A few regulations however seem to have greater impacts on the functioning of financial markets. The regulation of commodity derivatives through MiFID II is an example of such a fundamental change. Adopting a modified version of the institutional supply and demand (ISD) framework, this paper analyses the regulatory processes of these MiFID II and the occurrence of regulatory capture. This paper argues that meaningful regulatory change in commodity derivative regulation was primarily achieved through the lobbying of civil society groups (CSOs) that were able to prevent the regulation being captured by capitalising on the normative aspects of commodity trading and forming alliances with economically powerful actors. As against to more complex and technical regulations, CSOs were able to raise public awareness on the topic of food speculation and its negative impacts and capitalise on this development. Backed by the economically powerful agriculture industry and discursively connecting commodity derivatives with food speculation, CSOs were able to create pressure on elected officials to adapt more stringent regulations. Methodologically, process tracing is used to compare the influence of civil society and business interests in the regulatory process on derivatives.