Abstract/Summary

Aware of the power of platform firms and the risks of the platform economy, governments are reconsidering the dominant laissez faire approach in favour of strategies that regulate the power of platform firms. transnational dynamics play an important role in shaping emerging national regimes, but we argue that governments are also influenced by three factors that operate primarily at domestic level: the agency of platform firms, the impact of first-mover US platforms, and domestic politics. We illustrate our approach through an analysis of the trajectories and regulatory measures of four economies: the US, the EU, China, and India. As governance efforts expand to emerging technologies such as AI, our analysis presages broader changes to the structure of what was, with a few important exceptions, a relatively borderless global online economy.