Setting International Standards – Technological Rationality or Primacy of Power?

Walter Mattli, fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, and Tim Buthe, Duke University

8/29/2008
(Original Publish Date: 10/1/2003)

Until the 1980s standards setting had been primarily an internal matter for firms or the domain of private sector technical bodies at the national level. Each country produced its own standards without much regard for what others were doing. International standards were few and far between, prescribing specifications for widely used products such as thickness of credit cards (0.76 mm), the sensitivity of photographic film (ISO ratings), the dimensions of freight containers, the thread pitch of screws, and the reference temperature for measurements of industrial length.