Constructing the International Foundations of E-Commerce—The EU-U.S. Safe Harbor Arrangement Henry Farrell The implications of e-commerce for international relations are only beginning to receive proper attention in academic debate+ Commercial relations conducted through new communications technologies 1 require the adaptation of old institu- tions 2 and the creation of new ones+ Conventional wisdom associates the advent of e-commerce with the retreat of the state and a renewed emphasis on private regulation+ Business actors claim that they are capable of regulating themselves, through voluntary codes of conduct, forums such as the Global Business Dialogue on e-commerce, 3 and Alternative Dispute Resolution ~ADR! mechanisms+ Many scholars argue that new technologies weaken the capacity of states to provide do- mestic and international order, so that states are giving way to private actors in cyberspace and e-commerce+ 4 However, contrary to many predictions, states are not being displaced in the governance of e-commerce by private actors+ Instead, in many areas, new relation- This article draws on research carried out during a fellowship at the Max Planck Project Group on Common Goods+ I am highly grateful to the Project Group, both for financial and intellectual support+ I am grateful to Joe Aldeheff and Marc Rotenberg for several conversations about privacy and self- regulation that informed my initial thinking on these topics+ I owe a very substantial debt to Greg Flynn, for reading and commenting on various iterations of this article, and for more general conver- sations on the relationship between constructivism and international relations during the past several years, which have had a deep influence on the research agenda articulated herein+ The article benefited from the comments of audiences at presentations in the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Society, Cologne; Georgetown University; and the University of Toronto+ Finally, I wish to express my thanks to Phil Agre, Nicole Anastasopoulos, Tom Banchoff, Tanja Boerzel, Christoph Engel, Nicole Erb, Adri- enne Héritier, Dirk Lehmkuhl, Margaret Levi, Abe Newman, Eric Posner, Thomas Risse, Vivien Schmidt, Debora Spar, Arun Venkataraman, Marco Verweij, and two anonymous reviewers for encouragement, or for reading and commenting on various versions of the manuscript, and to Peter Gourevitch, David Lake, and Lisa Martin for invaluable editorial comments+ 1+ Note that e-commerce does not solely consist of transactions carried out on the World Wide Web or the Internet more generally+ 2+ Drake and Nicolaides 1999+ 3+ Cowles 2001+ 4+ See Johnson and Post 1996; Froomkin 1997; Kobrin 1997; Kobrin forthcoming; Spar 1999 ~but see Spar 2001 for a more recent account which is broadly compatible with that advanced here!; and Simon 2000+ International Organization 57, Spring 2003, pp+ 277–306 © 2003 by The IO Foundation+ DOI: 10+10170S0020818303572022