Arranjos regulatórios das plataformas digitais: quem regula e para quem se regulam as plataformas digitais?

Abstract

This thesis examines the legal and institutional foundations of digital platform regulation from an administrative law perspective. It focuses on understanding the regulatory landscape by addressing three key questions: "What is regulated?" "Who regulates?" and "For whom is regulation intended?" The analysis emphasises interaction mechanisms between state entities, private platforms, and other stakeholders.The institutional diagnosis applies Julia Black's analytical framework to assess regulatory resources, examining internal and external factors that influence their use and the presence of change management instruments—all indicators of regulatory capacity resilience. Given the wide distribution of regulatory agents across subnational, national, and international levels, the diagnosis employs Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann's reference area selection methodology.The research recognises that platforms—defined as programmable digital infrastructures that organise social, economic, and informational interactions—have created systemic risks to fundamental rights, competition, sovereignty, decent work, and democracy. It proposes a legitimacy test for regulatory initiatives based on normative and functional criteria, advocating for stronger institutional capacity of the regulatory state to address complex digital business models.The proposed regulatory framework rests on the premise that coordinated, ongoing interaction between public and private sectors is vital for promoting collective welfare. This leads to the argument that the state's response to platform-related challenges requires improving existing institutional arrangements, including updates to administrative structures and norms.The study explores various digital platform definitions and their evolution, advancing an organisational and infrastructural approach that emphasises platforms' active role in shaping interactions, extracting data, and imposing private rules. It advocates moving beyond traditional state regulation versus self-regulation dichotomies through hybrid arrangements (co-regulation and regulated self-regulation). This approach calls for a new responsive administrative organisation model featuring democratic legitimacy, technical capability, and effective coordination across multiple levels and agents.Drawing from informational administrative law theory and decentralised regulation, the research proposes improvements to regulatory arrangements. It provides an assessment of Brazil's regulatory capacities and offers modernisation guidelines. The study concludes by establishing two pillars to modernise Brazil's regulatory framework: (i) optimising essential regulatory resources—expertise, data, authority, and legitimacy—distributed among public and private actors; and (ii) enhancing public-private interaction processes through a responsive administrative organisation with state digital infrastructures and clear guidelines for legitimate platform self-regulation. These pillars seek to align the regulatory system with constitutional values while strengthening its resilience to rapid technological change.