Invisible Public Administration Reforms or How Tractor Seat Standards Influence Our Lives

Abstract

The study deals with the questions of standardisation as technical norm-making and its enforcement mechanisms, conformity assessment and accreditation. It examines why and how the accelerated globalisation and deregulation ever since the ‘70s made these institutions of economic self-regulation more and more valuable. Standardization and its enforcement mechanisms are the means and at the same time the products of globalisation, which are as such also its invisible driving force. Even though these are means of economic self-regulation, they are connected to public administration through several points.