appropri-ate to talk of the revaluation of knowledge stocks that have been neglected so far than of a new production of knowledge. Finally, the function of regulation no longer may be found in preventing or settling conflicts but rather in its acti-vating character.
problem and increasingly demands for ‘solutions’ beyond the single countries capacities.
6.2.1 Overcoming the ‘Territorial Trap’∗
In order to fathom how possible solutions to border-crossing problems can be achieved, insights gained in the present study may be helpful in that an organ-izational-based approach to regulation seems to provide a perspective that lim-its the analysis not to territorial boundaries. By doing so, also an understanding of organizations can be invoked that seems more appropriately to correspond to the conditions of world society as they have been outlined in chapter 2 in that organizations no longer are understood as German, American, Greek and the like. Instead, organizations first of all must be conceived of as legal, scientific and economic organizations that are embedded in a respective local context. In addition, it is this local context that no longer must necessarily be understood as a national context.
As this study has suggested shifting the attention to the respective em-pirical matter, a ‘local context’ must rather be understood as the intertional network that emerges around the matter than the country the organiza-tions probably are located in. In so taken a perspective that first of all focuses on a specific problem, interorganizational networks, organizational fields or regions will evolve as the sites where the regulatory processes take place.
Moreover, as insinuated above, none of these formations must be understood as limited to a territorial entity but rather traverse national boundaries. Therefore, the increasingly border crossing quality of problems can more adequately be grasped if the border crossing quality of organizational relations is emphasized in the analysis.
Consequently, a methodological nationalism (Albert & Hilkermeier 2001) can be avoided since in that perspective also organizations can be taken into account that first of all are characterized as transnational organizations (e.g. United Nations). Therefore, this perspective is considered as helpful for the analysis of increasingly evolving transnational regulatory processes.
6.2.2 Regulatory Processes in World Society
Under the effect of growing global relations as well as global reciprocal influ-ences it does not seem to make much sense to think of ‘society’ as linked with the notion of nation-state as a territorially bordered entity. This corresponds to the widely consented observation that an increasing number of problems mod-ern society is faced with no longer are restricted to individual countries. There-fore, instruments mobilized by individual countries in order to cope with
∗ This term has been coined by Agnew (1994).
tain problems no longer seem to fit the complexity of these problems. As an effect, in various fields attempts can be observed that aim to install regulatory frameworks beyond the single countries’ legal regulations. And given that world society as it has been conceptualized in chapter 1.2 is most of all charac-terized by a plurality of at least disparate perspectives and thus by heterogene-ity, the development of a transnational regulatory framework that mirrors this plurality of perspectives can expected to be a most demanding endeavor.
Given the findings of the present study, now the question must be raised under which conditions such a transnational regulatory framework can provide adequate solutions to border crossing problems. As shown in the previous chapters, each legal norm becomes applied locally by those to whom it was originally designed to regulate. Therefore, it can be assumed that each transna-tional regulation will become implemented differently in the context of the various countries that are to be regulated by the given rule, since its process of implementation will be accompanied by locally generated knowledge or by locally relevant power. With regard to the original regulatory trigger, disparate outcomes can be expected. Even though this is not to say that transnational regulatory frameworks hopelessly are constrained by the dynamics that unfold in their local application, limitations to transnational regulations have to be assumed. Given the description of the dynamics that unfold when a legal rule enters its original field, those dynamics to a certain extent can be anticipated also in the case of transnational rules. In addition, given the relative ‘distance’
of these rules to their respective fields one can assume that the effect of distor-tion will even be stronger in these cases. Therefore, it seems wise to invoke the understanding of regulation as a knowledge practice as helpful in the quest for more appropriate transnational regulations – more appropriate in that these regulations are likely to be attuned to its various local contexts’ demands. Nev-ertheless, since the development of a full-fledged conception of transnational regulatory frameworks would go beyond the scope of this study, the following concluding remarks have to be considered as preliminary.
On the premise that the conflict-solving function of regulation increas-ingly has to be rejected, also the function of transnational regulatory frame-works can be defined as ‘activating’ in the first place. Thus, what has been considered as relevant for national legal rules also counts for transnational le-gal rules in that those have to provide mechanisms by which a most broad range of actors can be taken into account. However, while these actors on the side have to be acknowledged, on the other side their autonomy must be se-cured in order to enable them to develop their own coping strategies. Only if this condition is fulfilled, attention is called to the fact that knowledge not only is produced in the context of applications (Nowotny 1999) but also that it can be turned into a useful societal resource. In this case of transnational regulatory
frameworks the respective ‘actors’ are the single countries, or, more precisely, the organizations of the single countries that feel affected by the given empiri-cal matter. Consequently, the autonomy of the single countries must be upheld if solutions should be provided that correspond to these countries’ realities.
This autonomy finally must be conceived of as sine qua non if the impor-tance of local knowledge under conditions of globalization should become a resource for the solution of present and future border crossing problems.