The Governance of Privacy Policy Instruments in Global Perspective

This book offers a broad and incisive analysis of the governance of privacy protection with regard to personal information in contemporary advanced industrial states. Based on research across many countries, it discusses the goals of privacy protection policy and the changing discourse surrounding the privacy issue, concerning risk, trust and social values. It analyzes at length the contemporary policy instruments that together comprise the inventory of possible solutions to the problem of privacy protection. It argues that privacy protection depends upon an integration of these instruments, but that any country's efforts are inescapably linked with the actions of others that operate outside its borders. The book concludes that, in a ’globalizing’ world, this regulatory interdependence could lead either to a search for the highest possible standard of privacy protection, or to competitive deregulation, or to a more complex outcome reflecting the nature of the issue and its policy responses.

Contents: Introduction. Policy Goals: The privacy paradigm; Privacy protection as social policy; Privacy protection: promoting trust and managing risk. Policy Instruments: Transnational policy instruments; Legal instruments and regulatory agencies; Self-regulatory instruments; Technological instruments. Policy Impacts: Privacy regimes; The evaluation of impact; International privacy protection: a race to the top, the bottom, or somewhere else?; Bibliography; Index.