Competition Law and Democracy
Markets as Institutions of Antipower

This book explores how competition and its protection through competition law are linked with democracy.

Elias Deutscher (Author)

9781316513675, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 November 2024

426 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.9 cm, 0.76 kg

Examining the normative foundations of US antitrust and EU competition law, Elias Deutscher argues that the idea of a competition-democracy nexus rests on a commitment to a republican understanding of economic liberty. The book uses this republican concept of economic liberty to analyse how US antitrust and EU competition law embodied a competition-democracy nexus and explains how the turn of competition law toward a more economic approach has led to its decline. The book offers proposals for how the nexus can be revived to allow competition law to address contemporary concerns about the concentration of corporate power.

Introduction
Part I: 1. The object of inquiry: The idea of a competition–democracy nexus
2. Republican liberty as the coupling between competition and democracy
Part II: 3. The building blocks of a republican competition law approach
4. The competition–democracy nexus in US antitrust and EU competition law jurisprudence
5. The policy parameters of republican antitrust: presumptions, standard of harm, and the error-cost framework
Part III: 6. The making of Laissez-Faire antitrust
7. The operationalisation of Laissez-Faire antitrust law and the decline of republican liberty
Part IV: 8. Main findings and avenues towards a competition–democracy nexus 4.0
9. Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Competition law / Antitrust law [LNCH]