The Structure of Regulatory Competition: Corporations and Public Policies in a Global Economy. By Dale D. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 336p. $99.00.

Dale Murphy addresses the study of globalization, specifically global regulatory competition, with the careful empirical work of a former banker and the analytical bite of a political science scholar. The result is a coherent theoretical statement about when, and under what conditions, states will dismantle regulations (the colloquial “race to the bottom,” or “competition-in-laxity” as Murphy labels it), harmonize them to the highest level (a trend David Vogel named the “California effect”), or allow heterogeneous regulations to prevail. What sets Murphy's book apart from other political science scholarship in this area is that he abandons the assumption that corporations have monolithic regulatory preferences, and instead unpacks the “black box” of the corporation. He then gives corporate preferences weight in the regulatory process. Thus, the motivations and preferences of corporations are significant drivers of a state's regulations, and determine whether regulations will be harmonized upward or downward in international regulatory competition: “Powerful firms exert influence but they do not seek a monotonic goal; one must identify each firm's different interests. Over time, these preferences will shape state regulations” (p. 9).