The Role of Lawyers as Intermediary Actors in the Enforcement of the Regional Competition Laws: A Case of the COMESA Competition Regulations

Generally, intermediary actors act as a bridge between institutions, building support for specific policies and innovations. However, existing literature on intermediary actors has focused on transition studies and specific policy domains such as climate change, democracy, education, and energy. In this paper, focusing on the COMESA Competition Commission (CCC) –a regional competition regime (RCR) in Africa– I explore the role of lawyers as intermediary actors in implementing the 2004 COMESA Competition Regulations. This study’s results show that lawyers' role is not limited to advising or representing clients. Due to their role in society, and positioning among multiple actors, lawyers can facilitate relationships between an RCR and its constituency actors, particularly during the contestation and embryonic stage of an RCR’s institutional development. This can happen through lobbying and lawyers acting as institutional entrepreneurs. For instance, as intermediary actors, lawyers act as lobbyists for CCC at the national level, pushing for institutional reforms in the COMESA Member States that support the application and interpretation of CCR. Importantly, lawyers have seen an opportunity in the COMESA competition regime to deliver new services, turning them into institutional entrepreneurs. As institutional entrepreneurs, lawyers continue to deepen their understanding of the COMESA competition regime through discursive platforms such as conferences, publications on their websites, and podcasts, reaching a wider audience. This paper calls for nuanced studies that explain actors' roles in the policy process by focusing on their roles and properties and the policy and institutional arrangement under investigation.