Stalling the State: How Digital Platforms Contribute to and Profit From Delays in the Enforcement and Adoption of Regulations

• Author: Joanna Mazur,Marcin Serafin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221089651
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221089651

Comparative Political Studies

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221089651

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Article

Stalling the State:

How Digital Platforms

Contribute to and

Profit From Delays in

the Enforcement and

Adoption of Regulations

Joanna Mazur1 and Marcin Serafin2

Abstract

While it is often claimed that the pace of digital transformation is such that

its own, often glacial changes do not allow the state to catch up, we argue

that technological companies, with the help of some state actors, have been

slowing the state down. To capture this phenomenon, we introduce the

notion of stalling strategies. We argue that stalling strategies have allowed

digital platforms to create time that they have spent generating revenue

and accumulating platform power, which later protected them from state

actions. Drawing on a case study of Uber in Poland and a number of shadow

cases, we distinguish five stalling strategies: reinventing classifications,

dragging out court proceedings, stealing the time of street-level bureaucrats,

delaying new regulations, and taking time to (not) comply. By analyzing

stalling strategies, this article contributes to discussions about the politics of

platform capitalism, the temporality of digitalization, and institutional drift.

1Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

2

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland/

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Marcin Serafin, Max Planck Partner Group for the Sociology of Economic Life at the Institute

of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Nowy Świat 72, Warsaw

00-330, Poland.

Email: serafin@mpifg.de

1089651

CPSXXX10.1177/00104140221089651Comparative Political StudiesMazur and Seraf‌in

research-article2022

2023, Vol. 56(1) 101–130

102 Comparative Political Studies 56(1)

Keywords

platform power, institutional drift, Uber, law enforcement, entrenchment

Introduction

Why have digital platforms been able to grow so quickly, even in the institu-

tionally hostile environments of heavily regulated markets? The expansion of

digital platforms into social life has been taking place at an astounding speed.

This is clear from the growing economic value of digital platforms such as

Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, and Tinder, but also from the growing num-

ber of social interactions that digital platforms now mediate (Kenney et al.,

2021).

The speed of digitalization is perhaps best illustrated by the rise of Uber

(Adler, 2021; Chan & Kwok, 2021; Calo & Rosenblat, 2017; Collier et al.,

2018; Rahman & Thelen, 2019; Seidl, 2021; Serafin, 2019). In the course of

less than 10 years, Uber has been able to successfully enter many heavily

regulated taxi markets and turn from a small startup located in Silicon Valley

into a global company with 14 billion dollars in revenue. Its business strategy

has been based on fast and effective expansion into new markets, which is

characterized by—among other things—its constant eagerness to highlight

the number of cities in which it operates. But the strong emphasis on the pace

of expansion is not unique to Uber. It is a characteristic of the business mod-

els of other digital platforms as well, as they aim to become “too big to ban”

(Pollman & Barry, 2017, pp. 400–403). In order to be successful, digital plat-

forms need to achieve a scale that ensures the effectiveness of linking various

groups of clients (Evans & Schmalensee, 2010; Rahman & Thelen, 2019;

Culpepper & Thelen, 2020).

The rapid growth of digital platforms should not be seen as self-evident.

Like other technological innovations (Bijker, 2007), the growth of platforms

has been a contested process (Schüßler et al., 2021). It is easy to forget now,

but Uber was not always the powerful incumbent it is today, with its domi-

nant position in most taxi markets around the world. It started as a small

challenger that, although armed with the deep pockets of venture capital, was

entering heavily regulated markets with powerful incumbent taxi corpora-

tions and entrenched rent-seeking interests of medallion owners (Collier et

al., 2018, p. 921).

One explanation for the rapid growth of digital platforms can be summa-

rized by Facebook’s motto “move fast and break things” or Uber’s “it’s better

to beg forgiveness than ask permission” (Tusk, 2018, p. 109; Kirchner &

Schüßler, 2020). The speed of digitalization, the argument goes, is related to