A decade of regulating tech giants: actors, resources, and power dynamics in platform regulation in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States (2016–2025)

Thesis

This thesis offers a comparative analysis of platform regulation between 2016 and 2025 across three advanced democracies: Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It foregrounds the power dynamics between two powerful regulatory actors: nation states as traditional loci of geopolitical power and giant technology platforms as increasingly influential private actors.

The research adopts a decisional and interpretive approach to examine how and why platform regulation emerges, what roles states and platforms assume in regulatory processes, and how power is negotiated between them. While existing scholarship often focuses on formalised laws and institutional arrangements, this thesis conceptualises regulation as a relational process between regulator (the state) and regulatee (the platform) which is enacted through the mobilisation of regulatory resources.

To that end, the research develops a framework of four regulatory resources – information, authority, treasure, and organised expertise – as inputs to regulatory capacity and analytically useful indicators of regulatory power. Both states and platforms command these resources, though their distribution is often asymmetric, with platforms holding structural advantages. Such asymmetries introduce tensions into regulatory processes and risk weakening the state’s capacity to exercise effective and independent regulatory power.

Drawing on interpretive policy analysis and a comparative case study design, the dissertation investigates the evolving regulatory landscape of tech regulation through 93 elite interviews, document analysis of an archive of 103 policy texts, and process tracing. The German case illustrates how the state, in response to perceived corporate inaction, asserted power by compelling platforms to enforce speech laws. In the UK case, resource constraints hindered regulatory development and posed risks of capture; these gaps were addressed by enrolling platform-held resources into formal regulatory arrangements. The US case reveals not an absence of regulation, but a fragmented federal system in which state and platform power have become entangled, hollowing out the state’s capacity to regulate.

The thesis proposes a resource-based, relational perspective on regulatory power, offering a new account of how and why state–platform relationships shape regulation in practice. Across cases, it shows that the capacity to mobilise resources determines regulatory outcomes. While states hold formal regulatory authority, they often lack the resources to regulate resource-rich platforms unilaterally. This creates a structural reliance on platform resources and platform involvement in regulation. In this relationship, the state retains regulatory power only where clear rules exist and it can enforce them.

Authors: Neudert, L-M

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wr1pgwkap
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: digital governance; digital policy; online safety; platform regulation; comparative case study; technology policy; regulatory capacity; interpretive policy analysis; regulatory resources; regulatory power
• Subjects: Regulation; Public policy; Political science; Communication in politics