The term ‘regulatory capture’ is frequently invoked to describe dysfunctional government institutions. In its casual use, it refers to a phenomenon in which regulations benefit regulated industries, rather than public interests. However, as an analytical concept, social scientists have struggled to empirically identify and define the processes in which capture emerges and sustains. In this article, I outline a cultural framework for regulatory capture by linking cultural sociology and the faces of power to existing capture theory. Through an ethnographic case study of digital trade provisions in international trade agreements, I show how capture occurs through the construction and manipulation of ‘public interests’. I trace how capture (a) emerges when industry lobbyists extend existing schemas of a policy network into new frames and (b) is institutionalized into regulatory agencies when policymakers adopt and enact these frames into knowledge production and law. Thus, capture appears through a veneer of consensus, which suppresses alternative interests and policy outcomes.

中文翻译：

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监管俘获权力的第三面

“监管捕获”一词经常被用来描述功能失调的政府机构。随意使用，它指的是监管有利于受监管行业而不是公共利益的现象。然而，作为一个分析概念，社会科学家一直在努力从经验上识别和定义捕获出现和维持的过程。在这篇文章中，我通过将文化社会学和权力面孔与现有俘获理论联系起来，勾勒出监管俘获的文化框架。通过对国际贸易协定中数字贸易条款的民族志案例研究，我展示了捕获是如何通过“公共利益”的构建和操纵而发生的。我追溯捕获 (a) 当行业游说者将现有的政策网络模式扩展到新框架时如何出现，以及 (b) 当政策制定者采用这些框架并将这些框架纳入知识生产和法律时如何制度化到监管机构中。因此，捕获是通过一种共识的表象出现的，它抑制了替代利益和政策结果。