University of Tasmania, Australia

Venue: Room 586, Social Sciences Building, Sandy Bay campus

All welcome - no RSVP required
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There is an ongoing debate concerning the most appropriate regulatory response to complex and dynamic governance challenges such as climate change or the financial crisis. One significant dimension of this debate is whether global policy or international law should be precise and prescriptive or whether it should deliberately be ambiguous in order to promote flexibility and discretion. While much of the recent literature contends that a degree of ambiguity in regulatory design is desirable, the paper argue that a degree of regulatory precision is both desirable and necessary to ensure the ongoing legitimacy and effectiveness of a governance regime. Using the example of recent initiatives designed to combat international tax evasion, this paper argues that global regulation evolves through a dynamic process of 'norm consolidation' through which ambiguous principles are gradually refined through an interactive and iterative process resulting in more precise and enforceable international regulation.

Speaker

Richard Eccleston is a specialist in domestic, comparative and international political economy with an emphasis on taxation policy and public finance. He is the author or editor of six books and over 30 articles and chapters on these and related topics. His most recent work (funded by the Australian Research Council) explores the dynamics of international tax cooperation in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis