(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book. Current versions are at book contents).
Economic regulation plays a big part in determining how people are affected by an economy and how much power they have. The different kinds of regulation described earlier (3.3.1) are mostly applied within each country, in a hierarchy of control under national governments – as indicated in the first sub-section below (3.4.1.1). These are increasingly subject to intergovernmental agreements, both multinational (3.4.1.2) and global (3.4.1.3), in which governments surrender some of their autonomy (3.4.1.4).
The regulations associated with bilateral, multilateral and regional trade deals also form part of the contentious topic of free trade, later in this chapter (3.5.4.5).