Dale Murphy addresses the study of globalization, specifically global regulatory competition, with the careful empirical work of a former banker and the analytical bite of a political science scholar. The result is a coherent theoretical statement about when, and under what conditions, states will dismantle regulations (the colloquial “race to the bottom,” or “competition-in-laxity” as Murphy labels it), harmonize them to the highest level (a trend David Vogel named the “California effect”), or allow heterogeneous regulations to prevail. What sets Murphy's book apart from other political science scholarship in this area is that he abandons the assumption that corporations have monolithic regulatory preferences, and instead unpacks the “black box” of the corporation. He then gives corporate preferences weight in the regulatory process. Thus, the motivations and preferences of corporations are significant drivers of a state's regulations, and determine whether regulations will be harmonized upward or downward in international regulatory competition: “Powerful firms exert influence but they do not seek a monotonic goal; one must identify each firm's different interests. Over time, these preferences will shape state regulations” (p. 9).

Corporations' preferences for or against greater regulation, in turn, stem from three structural factors: the locus of regulations, meaning whether the jurisdiction regulates the production process or market access; the characteristics of that industry or sector's market structure; and the specificity of the corporation's assets. Murphy selected six cases that vary on these structural factors—shipping flags-of-convenience, offshore finance, the Montreal Protocol on CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), the Basle Accord on Capital Adequacy, Mexican tuna-dolphin, and the Infant Formula Marketing in the United States—to show how these sectoral or industry conditions shape corporations' regulatory preferences. The meat of the book is in these extensive case studies, and they are extremely thorough and wide-ranging. The first two cases show a trend toward lower-common-denominator harmonized regulation, the second two toward higher-common-denominator harmonized regulation, and the final two to a heterogeneous (nonharmonized) regulation. One of the outcomes his typology resolutely ignores is mutual recognition agreements. MRAs are agreements to accept other countries' regulations and tend to put downward pressure on governments' standards. These can be very important (e.g., the European experience), but Murphy does not include a discussion of the corporate preferences that would allow governments to conclude MRA agreements, declaring in a footnote that “MRAs do not obviate the utility of the three analytical trajectories used here … just as warm water does not obviate the distinction between cold and hot. They do, however, raise an interesting new question as to what conditions lead to their implementation” (p. 241).

Murphy is careful, in his analysis of the cases, not to be overly deterministic in his assessments, for example, noting that “over the long term, asset specificity may change as firms change their investment strategies” (pp. 226–27), and thus implying a strategic dimension to the business–government interaction. He is similarly open to accepting that the vagaries of fate, as well as the characteristics of leadership, play an important part of the story of corporations' preference: “[A] key element of choice that emerges in the case studies above are [sic] the decisions by business strategists and policy entrepreneurs to lead or to lag in inducing regulatory change” (p. 242). Clearly, however, his focus in the entire book is on the corporation's side of the equation, and the transmission of corporate preferences to the government is less explored. To the extent that there are cross-national differences in the degree to which the government's position on regulation may be shaped by other, noncorporate, interests, Murphy's framework and cases may overgeneralize from America's business–government relationship. Would statist governments be less likely to incorporate only the regulatory preferences of businesses? Would the European Commission, which now proposes a majority of European regulation, be as beholden to business interests as national governments? (And if so, which ones?) There is an interesting story to tell about the transmission of preferences from business to government, but as the author correctly points out, there are more studies on that process than on his essential contribution that establishes the origins of the regulatory preferences of businesses.

Murphy has 20 pages of implications for next-generation research on international political economy, as well as detailed observations about what his case studies and variables imply for other theoretical perspectives. In particular, he critiques many of the nonmaterialist motivations often ascribed to the higher-regulation outcomes, such as the Montreal Protocol on CFCs, the ban on dolphin–lethal tuna imports, and the restrictions on infant formula advertising: “[I]t was clear from the case details that corporate interests were critical…. [T]o unearth these material aspects takes considerable perseverance, as they are often deliberately concealed” (p. 241). He nevertheless acknowledges a place (albeit secondary) for these other variables in rounding out cases where material motivations are ambiguous.

Perhaps the most engaging segment of The Structure of Regulatory Competition is the “practical implications for business and policy leaders” section. Here, Murphy's background in corporations and government shines, and he is able to distill lessons from his research. Moreover, he is quite modest about the predictive claims toward one form of regulation over another. By not overselling his results, he highlights his contribution effectively. His emphasis on differentiating and integrating firm preferences into international relations is welcome and rare. One hopes that other international relations scholars will take the time to open up the black box of “business” and use those insights as effectively as Dale Murphy does.