From Market Refereeing to Geoeconomic Positioning: Competition Authorities and the Strategic Reorientation of Enforcement

Competition authorities have traditionally derived their legitimacy from a technocratic mandate: enforcing rules that prevent market concentration and ensure competitive dynamics, independent of political interference. This positioning has made competition policy a cornerstone of regulatory governance in market economies. However, rising protectionism and geoeconomic rivalry between major powers are fundamentally challenging the autonomy and institutional logic of competition enforcement. This paper examines how competition authorities in the United States and European Union are responding to these pressures, navigating the tensions arising from increased skepticism towards their technocratic decision-making, and what this reveals about the changing relationship between regulatory independence and increasingly protectionist political decision-making. I propose a theoretical framework that situates competition authorities within the broader political economy of geoeconomic competition. Drawing on economic sociology and regulatory governance scholarship, I argue that we are witnessing a qualitative shift in the function of competition enforcement. Where competition policy once mediated rivalry between domestic market actors, it is increasingly being faced with calls to be deployed as an instrument of inter-state economic competition. This represents not merely a change in enforcement priorities but a fundamental reorientation of regulatory purpose — from market refereeing toward strategic positioning in global economic rivalry. This shift creates acute tensions for competition authorities attempting to reconcile political pressures with the principles of the rule-of-law. Their understanding of themselves rests on their technocratic role, providing consistent, predictable enforcement based on competition criteria rather than political considerations. Yet geoeconomic pressures push towards differential treatment based on the national domicile of regulated firms. This raises the question of whether competition regulators can maintain their technocratic self-understanding when states increasingly frame major corporations as strategic assets. To empirically investigate this tension, I conduct a quantitative analysis of enforcement patterns by the relevant US and EU agencies. I construct a dataset of enforcement actions from the DoJ/FTC and the Directorate-General for Competition from 1990 to 2025, analysing the frequency and stringency of enforcement. The key empirical question is whether enforcement patterns diverge based on the domicile of targeted corporations — specifically, whether foreign-domiciled firms face systematically different treatment than domestically-headquartered ones. Theoretically, I expect a divergence in treatment of home- versus foreign-domiciled firms. However, this does not necessarily entail an explicit departure from technocratic legitimation. Such divergence could be justified through technocratic competition-based reasoning — for instance, by framing foreign firms as posing particular risks to market competition — even as the pattern of enforcement aligns with geoeconomic objectives. This ambiguity is analytically significant: it suggests that strategic reorientation may occur without overt rupture in regulatory self-presentation. This research contributes to regulatory governance scholarship by illuminating how external geopolitical pressures reshape the conditions under which regulatory agencies operate. It addresses ongoing debates about technocratic legitimacy, the sustainability of regulatory independence, and the reconciliation of rule-of-law principles with political decision-making in an era of rising protectionism. The findings advance the understanding not only of competition policy but the broader fate of autonomous regulatory institutions when states reassert strategic control over economic governance. P2