How Private Insurers Regulate Misconduct in China’s Society: A Theoretical Consideration
Currently, we are going through a process where regulation is being devolved to the private sector. Contracts are increasingly being used as a tool to regulate social relationships. Scholars comment that social regulation is moving toward a regulation without government era, especially in advanced industrial democracies. Among the private entities, insurers have long been involved in successful regulation regarding tort misconduct. For example, in America, evidence shows that liability insurers play a positive governance role in regulating the misconduct behaviors of private actors such as gasoline tank owners and public actors like police. In Canada, automobile insurance is regarded as a social contract that regulates automobile disputes to safeguard public interests.
China’s society is also delegating governance responsibilities from the government to the private sector, with insurers leading the way in this transformation. As for the existing scholarship, governance by insurance is not a novel research topic in developed democracies. Many scholars, such as Tom Baker, John Rappaport, and Timothy D Lytton, have already established a theoretical framework to evaluate and investigate regulation by liability insurance based on their developed insurance market conditions. Empirical research is also conducted in various fields. In contrast, the theoretical and empirical research on regulation by liability insurance in China’s context is insufficient. Few scholars have researched this field recently, but these studies have significant limitations.
This research investigates the theoretical considerations of regulation through liability insurance, establishing conceptual groundwork bridging theory and empirical research in this field. Building on prior research, this paper intends to advance a China-specific theoretical framework for regulation by liability insurance. The proposed framework will contribute to exploring the regulatory role of liability insurance in China and enrich broader theoretical discourse in this field.