Platform power and regulatory politics: Polanyi for the twenty-first century

Intensifying concerns about online platform firms’ rapid rise, expansion, and growing asymmetric power have attracted political scrutiny undermined the legitimacy of a minimalist regulatory regime that is giving way to intense debate increasingly interventionist governmental policies enforcement actions. First, we view rise of, recent responses to, often-predatory manipulative conduct firm in terms ‘Polanyian’ double movement which destabilising destructive effects unchecked corporate activities market development eventually generates constrain private threaten social, political, economic order. Second, incipient legal changes, most notably EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act Services Act, indicate shift emphasis from competition (and antitrust) policy law towards more intensive encompassing forms socio-economic regulation. Finally, these changes will likely vary character significance across jurisdictions, embody distinctive possibly divergent developmental trajectories. The EU may first-mover advantage regulating firms, but are only at very beginning protracted conflictual transformational process.