Deep-tier regulation: on governance by and of private regulators

Abstract 71 The expansive regulatory activities of digital gatekeepers and lead firms of global value chains are extending the production process far beyond the boundaries of the firm into its social as well as extra-societal environment. They have globally reshaped the dynamics of value generation by capitalising social relationships between their users, their psychic apparatus and natural resources respectively. When private regulation thus extends to the deeper horizontal as well as vertical extra-societal tiers of the world, legal review cannot be limited to the protection of competitive markets but has to go deep-tier, too. Therefore, the article proposes a stack model of transversally linked autonomies that attempts to overcome the socio-centric perspectivity and the corresponding reductionism of social and legal theory. Building on the constitutionalization of property-based private governance, initial ideas are outlined on how the law can take account of the transversality of autonomy.