Regulatory fictions and instruments of imagination: how professionals anticipate future bans on chemicals

Abstract This article studies how professionals managing chemicals orient themselves in relation to uncertain regulatory futures. Specifically, it interrogates how these professionals strategically use and evaluate a particular device: A list of substances that are deemed likely to become restricted through the European Union REACH legislation. Adopting Jens Beckert’s program of fictional expectations to describe this phenomenon, the article seeks to extend this program by introducing the term “regulatory fictions.” As a second contribution, the article also interrogates how such fictions about imagined regulatory futures are made credible. Further, as a third contribution, the article places the fictional expectations program in relation to ongoing debates about soft regulation. In so doing, it connects Beckert’s micro-level account of strategic economic action with wider politico-economic concerns about the dynamism and regulation of markets.