Regulated Self-Regulation from a Legal Historical Perspective

Completed Project

Regulated self-regulation is a social self-organisation which is controlled and put to use by the state. By this mode of a collective shaping of social relations it is not only ideas of state welfare that are enforced; at the same time private players are discharged and released from problems of coordination which cannot be solved with instruments of a civil society. However, regulated self-regulation does not only stand for a relationship of a mutually beneficial cooperation but also translates their tense relationship. Conceptions of a normative order always wrestle which each other, conceptions which concern the distribution of or powers of configuration between "state" and "society".

In the recent past, it was primarily the science of public law which carefully became aware of and took note of this phenomenon of the coordination of the public and the private sphere and then integrated the legal problems involved in its thoughts and reflections on the further development of legal dogmatics. However, regulated self-regulation is not merely a contemporary phenomenon. Various forms of an interdependence between public goal settings and organised societal interests may be observed from a historical perspective, even in their legal contours. This is where the epistemological interest of legal history applies, which, especially in this field, relies on the dialogue with other historical disciplines, particularly the history of administration, economy and social policy.

The project "Regulated Self-Regulation from a legal history perspective" aims to review this set of problems for the 19^th and the early 20^th centuries. It focuses on the analysis of the formation of legal arrangements and the discourse in science and politics, which accompanied the emergence of new as well as the modification of existing normative structures.

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