Governing the common good: Collective action in institutional maintenance

In the Danish housing-construction industry, 'the technical common good' is used as the collective noun for the sum of practical experiences, professional literature, techniques and tested routines in different technical areas that professionals are expected to be familiar with. The technical common good is a codification of the often-tacit professional knowledge, which over time has come to be regarded as an expression of proper practice. As such, the technical common good also prescribes specific methods and technical solutions that help professionals meet the requirements of the building regulation. Due to its role in the institutionalization of what constitutes proper conduct and professional practice in a Danish context, the technical common good has been met by criticism in a regulatory context, where it has been accused of being 'backdoor' regulation that stifles innovation and constitutes a barrier to the globalization of labor and building materials. Drawing on empirical material from in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants from government, industry and professional associations, we illustrate how the institution of the technical common good is singled out as the battleground for the struggles to redefine the governance of the industry. We draw on the concept of institutional infrastructure interlocks to identify two types of interlocks (sequencing interlocks and expertise interlocks) and associated meta-routines (standardized problem solving and distributed monitoring and policing) that connect actors to the technical common good and have given rise to a distributed form of maintenance of the technical common good. We then illustrate how these interlocks have been challenged and lost legitimacy in the face of the deregulation and globalization of the industry, and how a new form of collective agency has arisen as professional associations have rallied in an attempt to establish new and legitimate infrastructure interlocks and governance structures in defense of the technical common good.