Algorithmic Regulation edited by Karen Yeung and Martin Lodge (2019) Oxford University Press, Oxford, hardback £74, 294pp. ISBN: 9780198838494

Is regulation an end in itself? Is it (or should it be) a normative concern? Does regulation encompass law, overlap it or is it distinct phenomenon from law? And what vision of law and governance should it represent? These questions have swirled in this domain for decades and are contested both inside and outside the field. But with the rise of the ‘algorithm’, an often-misunderstood and muchabused term, we are seeing – as Lodge and Menneckin point out in chapter 8 – a flattening of the discussion. In this flattening process, many of the political and conceptual nuances of the field are collapsed under the weight of a cybernetic, neoliberal model of governance that views citizens as ‘end-users’, ‘customers’ and ‘rule-takers’, rather than full participants in a societal structure that seeks, even if it doesn’t always or even often succeed, to empower them as the authors of their own inter-connected lives.