Ulf Larsson Olaison

Explaining Transnational Rules : Discourses and Material Conditions When Implementing the Swedish Corporate Code of Conduct

An understanding of how regulatory reforms are explained and put into action is vital for understanding the diffusion as well as the effects of transnational rules. In this chapter we claim that two processes of interpretation take place as a rule is transferred from the international scene and implemented into a specific national context: first, a process to make the import of the rule understandable and, second, a process in order to explain the content of the rule and to apply it in the local context. In this chapter we focus on the first of these processes and investigate how a transnational device for regulating corporate governance, corporate governance codes, gets on the regulatory agenda and is explained as appropriate on a national level through appealing to international discourse of how problems should be defined and solved.