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Rule-Making Feedbacks through Intermediation and Evaluation in Transnational Private Governance
Abstract
Feedback from rule-making is an important facet of regulatory processes. By examining the operations of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a transnational private certification program, we explore two types of feedback that operate within and outside R-I-T relationships and potentially influence agenda-setting and rule-reformulation. Within R-I-T relationships, intermediation feedback results from the knowledge that intermediaries acquire as they translate rules into practical forms applicable to specific regulatory targets. Intermediaries may communicate this knowledge to the regulator to strategically inform rule-reformulation. But the regulator may also have access to this information if transparency obligations come with the responsibility of performing intermediation functions. Outside R-I-T relationships, evaluation feedback involves external evaluative audiences—actors outside the regulatory process that hold an interest in evaluating and influencing that process. Transparency about R-I-T relationships should strengthen this feedback, though lack of information will not prevent external evaluators from rendering judgments and seeking to influence rule-reformulation.
... This expertise could then position them as informal advisors in upstream stages, when the regulation was being changed or revised (Galland 2017;Havinga & Verbruggen 2017;Lytton 2017;Silva 2017). Auld and Renckens (2017) provide a telling illustration. They explain how auditors who certify fisheries for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a transnational private regulatory program for sustainable fishing, develop expertise from the practical application of the MSC's rules. ...
... The emergence of these informal roles can be explained in different ways. The role of RIs is likely to evolve or even diverge over time from its initial formal definition as RIs face real issues on the ground (Auld & Renckens 2017). It might also come to include additional and unexpected dimensions (van der Heijden 2017), notably as a result of to intermediaries' self-interest (Galland 2017). ...
... For instance, complex law can be translated and implemented locally through a "regulatory chain" composed of various intermediaries (Havinga & Verbruggen 2017;Silva 2017). In transnational governance, given the importance of translating global regulation into many different local contexts (Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson 2006), intermediaries have proven key to engineering this local adaptation (Auld & Renckens 2017). In this special issue, Kourula et al. (2019) highlight how intermediaries can take such a "translator" role in the case of specific private regulatory programs (e.g. ...
... In fact, these are often limiting factors for growth of certificates (Matus 2014). Ensuring compliance can be costly, and often relies on scarce capacity, in terms of the availability of appropriately skilled auditors (or similar "regulatory intermediaries") (Abbott et al. 2017)which for legitimacy reasons are almost always organizations external to the standard-setting organization (Cashore 2002;Auld & Renckens 2017). There are also potential principal-agent problems, wherein the auditors are under competitive pressure with other auditing agencies. ...
... There are also potential principal-agent problems, wherein the auditors are under competitive pressure with other auditing agencies. They may compete for human resources, or drive towards efficiency, which may not always align with stringency (Auld & Renckens 2017). Recent scholarship has broadened the scope of intermediaries to any actor that acts as a "go-between" in the relationship between a regulator and its target regulatees. ...
Concerns around machine learning’s societal impacts have led to proposals to certify some systems. While prominent governance efforts to date center around networking standards bodies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), we argue that machine learning certification should build on structures from the sustainability domain. Policy challenges of machine learning and sustainability share significant structural similarities, including difficult to observe credence properties, such as data collection characteristics or carbon emissions from model training, and value chain concerns, including core-periphery inequalities, networks of labor, and fragmented and modular value creation. While networking-style standards typically draw their adoption and enforcement from functional needs to conform to enable network participation, machine learning, despite its digital nature, does not benefit from this dynamic. We therefore apply research on certification systems in sustainability, particularly of commodities, to generate lessons across both areas, informing emerging proposals such as the EU’s AI Act.
... While some of that literature emphasizes the constructive roles intermediaries can play within regulatory systems, accounts that find symbiosis between intermediaries and regulation tend to focus on nonprofit, avowedly values-driven actors such as sustainability certification organizations (e.g. Auld & Renckens 2017). The second contribution is specific to the literature on businesses and environmental regulation. ...
... They can be important informational vectors between regulators and the regulated, sometimes providing information that would not otherwise be available or legitimating informative messages that otherwise would come from distrusted sources (Abbott et al. 2017). They also can supplement the expertise and extend the resources of public regulators (Auld & Renckens 2017). Relatedly, because regulatory intermediaries may operate at different geographic scales than government regulators, they can provide useful pathways for information to move between different regulatory jurisdictions (Owen 2016). ...
Most accounts of businesses and regulators depict adversarial relationships. In these accounts, businesses typically seek to avoid or limit public regulation or, alternatively, to distort it so it serves private rather than public ends. This article uses a study of the environmental consulting industry to explore a different set of relationships between businesses and public regulation. These consultants generally work for for‐profit companies, and they serve as regulatory intermediaries between businesses and government. Those dual roles raise concerns that environmental consultants, like many other businesses, will seek to subvert regulatory schemes or will serve as instruments of regulatory capture. While some evidence supports these concerns, interviews and documentary research also demonstrated widespread perceptions that consultants play two other roles. First, environmental consultants strive to operate as trusted facilitators of constructive relationships between regulators and regulated entities. Second, for combined reasons of profit motive and value‐based moral commitments, environmental consultants also strive to act as guardians and proponents of the public values underlying environmental regulation. These roles have implications for descriptive understandings of the functioning of regulatory regimes and for regulatory system design. Most importantly, in contrast to literature emphasizing the need to protect regulatory governance from private, for‐profit entities, these findings illustrate how for‐profit regulatory intermediaries can work to bolster regulatory governance.
... Reasons for their involvement in rulemaking a task usually associated with the regulator rather than the intermediarystem in part from their expertise in on-the-ground behavior of targets and the practical implementation of rules (Galland 2017, p. 272). This expertise is particularly influential during the early stages of rule development and operationalization (Auld & Renckens 2017). In short, there are strong organizational incentives for regulators to involve auditors because they can ensure that regulators formulate the rules in a manner that can facilitate systematic implementation and enforcement. ...
... Transparency mechanisms in audit reporting and the incorporation of beneficiaries and third parties (e.g. accreditation bodies) as intermediaries can partially prevent these capture risks (Auld & Renckens 2017). ...
This article builds on the model of regulatory intermediaries by incorporating insights from the field of legal hermeneutics about the process through which the meaning of a legal rule emerges. It describes how intermediaries can take on a jurisgenerative role in the development of legal rules through their interpretation of legal rules. This role is demonstrated through an analysis of social audits from Chinese and Vietnamese factories involved in the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The analysis illustrates how the integration of fundamental labor rights into the FLA's private Code of Conduct requires auditors to develop new interpretations of the Freedom of Association as a result of uncertainties and contradictions between legal requirements at various levels, as well as with the FLA's own rules. Through this empirical analysis, the article contributes to the literature by identifying regulatory intermediaries’ jurisgenerative capacities when they monitor fundamental labor rights referenced by private governance instruments. It further highlights why legal and regulatory governance scholars need to consider the transformative effects that transnational private labor governance may have on international labor law.
... Usually, MSIs and their secretariats publicly report on their activities, performance (understood as adequate compliance by participating firms), and progress. Transparency and access to information are, therefore, key to these indirect accountability mechanisms (Auld & Renckens, 2017;Bäckstrand, 2006;Hale, 2008). For instance, the FSC publishes an annual report, but also position papers, reports by certification bodies on corrective action requests, and overviews of scientific studies on the FSC's impact. ...
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs)—private governance mechanisms involving firms, civil society organizations, and other actors deliberating to set rules, such as standards or codes of conduct, with which firms comply voluntarily—have become important tools for governing global business activities and the social and environmental consequences of these activities. Yet, this growth is paralleled with concerns about MSIs’ deliberative capacity, including the limited inclusion of some marginalized stakeholders, bias toward corporate interests, and, ultimately, ineffectiveness in their role as regulators. In this article, we conceptualize MSIs as deliberative systems to open the black box of the different elements that make up the MSI polity and better understand how their deliberative capacity hinges on problems in different elements. On the basis of this conceptualization, we examine how deliberative mini-publics—forums in which a randomly selected group of individuals from a particular population engage in learning and facilitated deliberations about a topic—can improve the deliberative capacity of MSIs.
... Regulatory intermediaries are particularly important at the emergent stage of regulatory regimes where they can act as co-regulators in the development of rules. Later, intermediaries provide an important feedback loop to regulators in the development and reformulation of regulation (Abbott et al., 2017a;Auld & Renckens, 2017). In what follows, I examine how and why gambling regulators, operators and software suppliers are reliant upon test houses in the regulatory process. ...
The forms of regulatory interventions in the gambling market differ across countries, but two main types are distinguishable. One is a monopoly regime in which national governments carry the activities directly through companies fully controlled by the State (i.e., Finland, Norway). The other is a licence-based system in which private companies are allowed to operate in the market under public concessions or licences (i.e., Spain, Italy).In licensed markets, gambling companies are often multinational firms with holding, sub-holding and several controlled subsidiaries operating worldwide. States have not any direct or indirect participation as shareholders in these companies. Instead, they must seek financial capitals from the market. As a consequence, some of these multinational groups are listed, others are controlled by private international hedge funds and almost all are financed by private financial institutions, making the financial sector one of the main stakeholders of the gambling industry.This paper describes the corporate structure of multinational gambling groups on the Italian market with a focus on the direct and indirect participation of the financial sector. The main critical implications of the relationship between gambling companies and financial institutions include a lack of transparency and a great lobbying power that can be used to influence the regulator.
... Feedback on regulation often passes through the intermediary to the regulator, which gives the intermediary power to re-formulate the target's message. Moreover, the intermediary itself also presents its own feedback to the regulator, who is likely to listen as the intermediary normally enjoys the regulator's trust (Abbott, Levi-Faur, and Snidal 2017, 23-28;Auld and Renckens 2017). Another process when the third party clearly affects the development of policy is when the intermediary has captured (i.e. ...
Since the 2008 financial crisis, more and more states have started to “sell” citizenships and residence permits to the global economic elite in return for investments. This trade is mediated by transnational firms in the investment citizenship industry, who help governments design and reform the programmes, and assist the wealthy in applying for them. The objective of this article is to explore the activities of these firms, that until now have been largely neglected in research. In order to understand their agency and the forms of power that they are able to exert, this article engages IR theory and sociological network theory on intermediaries. It is argued that investment citizenship firms take on two different intermediary roles at the same time, as regulatory intermediary and as broker. The article finds that the firms are sometimes able to amount a considerable power vis-à-vis state actors; and that they also contribute to the decoupling of the global elite from ties to precise localities, in the process also transforming the purpose of statehood. The investment citizenship firms are hence consequential actors in global governance, and their activities merit more research attention.
... For instance, auditors that were involved in certifying for the Marine Stewardship Council also built up valuable knowledge and expertise. This expertise, in turn, was used during upstream rule-making processes as a kind of "intermediation feedback" (Auld & Renckens, 2017). Brés et al. (2019) have suggested to focus on two interrelated dimensions while discussing informal intermediation. ...
This chapter reviews the emerging landscape of voluntary standards in the business and human rights field. I start by defining ‘voluntary standards’, and I show how this type of regulation differs from legal sanctions and social norms. Next, I introduce a taxonomy to classify the landscape of standards for business and human rights. The taxonomy distinguishes standards based on their mode of governance as well as purpose. The following section reviews literature on voluntary standards and distinguishes between scholarly work on input to standard setting, the institutionalization of standards, and their impact (the “3Is”). Finally, this chapter outlines selected research topics that are either part of the contemporary debate on voluntary standards or reflect exciting research opportunities for future scholarly work.
... Recent advances in scholarship on regulatory governance have identified these actors as "intermediaries" that perform a central role in linking the actors that create the private rules with those that are targeted to comply with these rules (Levi-Faur & Starobin 2014;Abbott et al. 2017;Brès et al. 2019). In the context of private regulation as discussed in this article, auditors and assessors, in their role as intermediaries, assist in achieving regulatory goals by interpreting and verifying adherence to private rules (Auld & Renckens 2017;Galland 2017;Fransen & LeBaron 2019;Paiement 2019). These actors occupy powerful positions in the verification process, since their decisions about rule adherence have direct implications for market access and hence impose costs on applicants. ...
Private regulatory programs, such as certification schemes, seek to control market access by providing greater certainty about products' credence attributes, including sustainability features of production processes. This article contributes to the literature that assesses the verification processes that determine whether private rules are being followed sufficiently by applicant rule‐targets (usually companies), and the regulatory intermediaries (auditors, assessors) that perform verification functions. By examining variation in the duration of verification processes of applicant rule‐targets, we question the assumption that within the context of a given program's design the efficiency of the verification process is invariant across time and space. We argue that the verification process can impose hurdles that are independent of rule‐targets' sustainability and their adherence to a private program's rules. Our analysis of 312 fisheries seeking Marine Stewardship Council certification shows that variation among intermediaries and objections to their certification decisions explain differences in the time it takes fisheries to receive market access.
... Different models of group certification, based on collective information systems, were developed to reduce cost and overcome capacity constraints. Despite the rise of intermediaries who are blurring the lines between assessors, standard setters and those guiding producer compliance [34], thirdparty auditing continues to be demanded by buyers given their aversion to brand damage. ...
This paper examines the potential for improved environmental performance of smallholder aquaculture production through 'beyond-farm' governance. Smallholder aquaculture farmers face a range of systemic environmental risks related to disease and water quality that extend beyond the boundary of their farms. Yet most governance arrangements aimed at mitigating risks, such as certification, finance and insurance, are focused on the farm-level rather than the wider landscape within which farming takes place. In this paper we propose an integrated approach to area-based management of aquaculture risks that integrates collective action, risk assurance and transfer, and inclusive value chains. In doing so, we set a new research agenda for the integrated governance of mitigating production risks and producer vulnerability in global food production. Addresses
... Kerwer (2005: 618) highlights how "there are private firms, which by auditing and certifying compliance with a certain standard, act as a deliberately designed monitoring structure." Fairtrade International (FLO) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) both collaborate with independent certification bodies to monitor compliance with their standards (Abbott et al., 2017;Auld & Renckens 2017;Loconto 2017). In other cases the standard-setters expect adopters to monitor their own compliance with the rules (i.e. ...
... One line of analysis has examined how intermediaries exploit their privileged position in the regulatory chain to benefit their own interests (Galland 2017;van der Heijden 2017). Auld & Renckens (2017), for example, analyze how, through practice and proximity to targets, auditors gain knowledge and expertise that they can then use to influence regulation to their benefit (I à R). A second line of analysis has examined how targets capture intermediaries (TàI). ...
Studies using the Regulatory–Intermediary–Target (RIT) framework have examined a variety of forms of regulatory capture, including how targets capture intermediaries (T➔I) and how intermediaries capture regulators (I➔R). Little attention has been paid to why and how regulators themselves might engage in capture. Yet such a scenario is likely in transnational governance settings characterized by regulatory competition and conflict, as well as power differentials between different types of private regulators (non‐governmental organizations, multinational corporations, and business associations). This paper elucidates why and how a private regulator might capture another private regulator via a regulatory intermediary: R1➔I➔R2. Drawing on interview and archival data, I examine three industry‐driven regulatory intermediaries created to harmonize private labor codes of conduct and ethical audit processes. These are founded and governed by a small group of retail trade associations and global retailers who also fulfill the role of private regulators (R1). My analysis reveals that the creation of these intermediaries is driven by global retailers’ reliance on standardization, low transaction costs, and regulatory harmonization across all aspects of their operations. It further reveals how the harmonization platforms are designed to leverage global retailers’ market power and evolve from regulatory intermediaries into de facto regulators that supplant existing private regulators (R2), and thereby capture transnational governance of consumer product supply chains. The article concludes by discussing contributions, implications, and avenues for future research.
... Kerwer (2005: 618) highlights how "there are private firms, which by auditing and certifying compliance with a certain standard, act as a deliberately designed monitoring structure." Fairtrade International (FLO) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) both collaborate with independent certification bodies to monitor compliance with their standards (Abbott et al., 2017;Auld & Renckens 2017;Loconto 2017). In other cases the standard-setters expect adopters to monitor their own compliance with the rules (i.e. ...
In this chapter we discuss standards as forms of partial organization. Standards are defined as decided rules for common and voluntary use. Taking the example of CSR and corporate governance standards, we show that the degree of partiality of standards can vary widely-ranging from a single element of organization, i.e. decided rules, to all five elements of organization, i.e. decided rules, hierarchies, membership, monitoring and sanctioning. We demonstrate that in some cases partiality is the result of restrictions in the design of standards, while in other cases it is the result of an explicit choice. We also demonstrate that the degree of partiality of standards can change over time, as there are often pressures for standards to adopt additional organizational elements. Furthermore, we discuss the dispersed nature of many standards showing how different actors often provide different organizational elements of standards without any central coordination. We close with an outline of an agenda for future research.
... This is a critical period for the region, during which CSOs, as a very diverse group of organised interests, could influence key decisions taken by governments, investors, and other stakeholders. The discursive strategies of international development agencies and national governments with respect to gender in development have received more attention (Kabeer, 2005;Bergeron, 2003;Ferguson, 2015;Auld and Renckens, 2017) than those of CSOs (Alvarez, 1999;DeJaeghere and Wiger, 2013). This is an important gap in the Mekong Region, because CSOs have often been vocal in raising awareness of the adverse impacts of development projects on the environment, and have also been advocating for woman's rights (Lebel et al., 2018), but have less frequently been linking environment and gender agendas (Resurrección and Nguyen, 2015;Laungaramsri, 2017). ...
'Gender in development' discourses are used to justify interventions into, or opposition to, projects
and policies; they may also influence perceptions, practices, or key decisions. Four discursive threads are globally
prominent: livelihoods and poverty; natural resources and the environment; rights-based; and managerial. Civil
society organisations (CSOs) have been vocal in raising awareness about the adverse impacts of large-scale
hydropower developments on the environment, on local livelihoods, and on vulnerable groups including women.
This discourse analysis first examines how CSOs engaging in hydropower processes in the Mekong Region frame
and use gender in development discourses, and then evaluates the potential of these discourses to empower both
women and men. Documents authored by CSOs are examined in detail for how gender is represented, as are
media reports on CSO activities, interview transcripts, and images. The findings underline how CSOs depend on
discursive legitimacy for influence. Their discursive strategies depend on three factors: the organizations’ goals
with respect to development, gender, and the environment; whether the situation is pre- or post-construction;
and, on their relationships with the state, project developers and dam-affected communities. The implications of
these strategies for empowerment are often not straightforward; inadvertent and indirect effects, positive and
negative, are common. The findings of this study are of practical value to CSOs wishing to be more reflexive in
their work and more responsive to how it is talked about, as it shows the ways that language and images may
enhance or inadvertently work against efforts to empower women.
... intermediaries are emerging (Auld & Renckens 2017;De Silva 2017;Lytton 2017; see also the contributions to this special issue), their motives, resources, relationships, and activities, in and across governance programs, have received less attention (Abbott et al. 2017a,b). Thus far, the focus of recent, especially empirical, research has been on specific actors, instead of an evaluation of how different elements need to be aligned to successfully enact a regulatory intermediary role and how dynamic interaction takes place in and across regulatory programs. ...
This paper develops a role‐based framework of intermediaries in regulatory programs. In examining the types of roles that organizations adopt in regulation and governance, we argue that roles have important implications for understanding organizational and program level dynamism and outcomes. We use the Regulator–Intermediary–rule‐Taker framework to describe how organizational roles can be adopted through assignment, appropriation, or promotion. We then go deeper into how intermediaries adopt a variety of different roles in key regulatory programs. We examine generic intermediary roles across programs that involve four main groups of activities: creating and/or organizing, coordinating between programs, supporting implementation, and voicing an opinion. All in all, our role‐based framework allows for a novel relational way to understand interorganizational and institutional dynamism in complex, interactive, and ever‐changing regulatory regimes.
... Along with their implementation and monitoring roles in performing these functions, intermediaries also frequently act as representatives in transnational arenas, where they aggregate and promote the interests of (sub)national actors (Levi-Faur & Starobin 2014). In other words, RIs operate between regulatory rulemakers (RMs) and targets, or rule-takers (RTs); they are central to organizing the mutually constituting "trickle-up" (RT à RI à RM) and "trickle-down" (from RM à RI à RT) feedback processes in transnational governance (Djelic 2006;Auld & Renckens 2017). ...
Recent contributions in the domains of governance and regulation elucidate the importance of rule‐intermediation (RI), the role that organizations adopt to bridge actors with regulatory or “rulemaking” roles and those with target or “rule‐taking” roles. Intermediation not only enables the diffusion and translation of regulatory norms, but also allows for the representation of different actors in policymaking arenas. While prior studies have explored the roles that such RIs adopt to facilitate their intermediation functions, we have yet to consider how field‐level structuring processes influence (and are influenced by) the various and changing roles adopted by RI. In this study we focus on the mutually constitutive relations between field‐level change processes and the evolving roles of RIs by studying the rise of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)/Local Governments for Sustainability, an RI serving as a bridge for sustainable urban development policies between the United Nations and local authorities. Using ICLEI as an illustrative case, we theorize four different processes of regulatory field structuration: problematization, role specialization, marketization, and orchestrated decentralization. We discuss their implications for RI roles in the field and further theorize the changing dynamics of trickle‐up intermediation processes as an RI gains power and influence.
... corporations involved in governance schemes, in the spirit of the UN Global Compact) and intermediaries succeed in driving rulemaking agendas (Havinga & Verbruggen 2017;van der Heijden 2017). Regulators, intermediaries, and targets also engage in different processes of knowledge exchange and feedback, with various implications of such feedback for regulation (Auld & Renckens 2017). ...
Much regulatory intermediation has come to entail forms of calculation and performance measurement. In this paper we analyze the role of performance measurement in regulatory intermediation in a transnational multistakeholder setting where intermediation lacks an official mandate. We do this through a study of the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks pharmaceutical companies in terms of their access to medicine policies and practices in developing countries. We conceptualize multi- stakeholder intermediaries as “second order rulemakers” reconciling diverse and often competing implicit and explicit rules across the governance field. We then detail various intermediation roles of performance measurement between attaining input and output legitimacy and enticing compliance among targets. Our case demonstrates how the selective formalization of measurement processes and the related ability to move back and forth from the role of intermediary to that of “ad hoc rulemaker” are important conditions for achieving and maintaining legitimacy. Furthermore, it shows that for multistakeholder intermediaries that rely on performance measurement, compliance by targets depends on the uptake of performance information by powerful constituencies. This illustrates how addressing legitimacy concerns and enticing compliance through performance measurement should be examined as co-emerging processes.
... Consequently, a key focus of research in the R-I-T-B framework has been an examination of whose interests are served by governance structures involving intermediaries-those of the regulators (Paiement 2018), targets (Maggetti et al. 2017) or intended beneficiaries (Monciardini & Conaldi 2018), or even the interests of the intermediaries themselves (Auld & Renckens 2017;Galland 2017;Kruck 2017). These studies suggest not only that intermediaries strive to extend their power and influence, but more fundamentally recognize that intermediaries are agentic, acting in the world in a deliberate and strategic manner. ...
How do the material aspects of intermediary work affect regulators, targets, and beneficiaries? To shed light on this question, we studied an information intermediary in the form of a website and the organizations who founded it. Specifically, we analyzed FracFocus, a self-regulatory initiative with strong industry ties, charged with disclosing data pertaining to the chemicals used in oil and gas wells completed using hydraulic fracturing technology (fracking) in the United States and Canada. We found that between 2010 and mid-2017, in states and provinces where fracking actively occurred the vast majority of legislation was updated to mandate or encourage disclosure via FracFocus, meaning that it had a considerable effect on the trajectory of official regulation on fracking disclosure. We also found that FracFocus disclosed important data but did so in a manner that limited accessibility and reduced the comprehensibility of environmental and public health risks to beneficiaries. Our analysis suggests that the public’s experience of such a device is one of opaque transparency, in which the line between official and non-official regulation is blurred. We traced these outcomes to the material affordances created by FracFocus.
... These observations are in line with various approaches to the study of PSOs, including those theorizing PSOs as self-interested actors seeking organizational survival and growth, and willing to take various measures to succeed in this (Auld, 2014;Abbott et al., 2016); those theorizing change in PSOs as a result of the different interests represented in a PSO (Gale, 2014); those theorizing PSOs as learning organizations adapting on the basis of experience with policy failures and successes (Auld and Renckens, 2017). Across these literatures, PSO organizational change means transformation from a less useful to a more useful position in terms of its organizational purpose, the agents it serves, the interests it represents or the resources it seeks. ...
Three narratives predominate about what drives change in the governance of private sustainability-standards in global supply chains. All three narratives present a pathway of change in which standard-setting as a form of regulatory governance is likely to remain relevant for the politics of sustainable production. This commentary proposes a fourth narrative of change. It argues that in some prominent sectors firms develop new policy instruments that strip sustainability interventions in supply chains from their regulatory governance qualities. Standard-setting organizations themselves meanwhile expand functions that are not of a regulatory governance nature. In this pathway, standard-setting organizations move in a different direction than the other three: away from certification and regulatory governance as core business.
... One thing that comes through clearly in the cases is how significant intermediaries are for the on-going interpretation and further development of regulations. Graeme Auld and Stefan Renckens (2017) show that intermediaries often acquire superior information that provides the basis for feedback about how rules work in practice; that information is valuable for facilitating and monitoring target compliance -and thereby valuable for rule reformulation. Jean-Pierre Galland (2017) discusses how as auditors gain expertise and influence, they advise regulators and accreditation bodies and provide best practice guides for third-party certifiers. ...
Regulation should be theorized as a three-party relationship (RIT), with intermediaries (I) playing diverse roles between the regulator (R) and the targets of regulation (T). Here we summarize and assess extensions of the basic RIT model introduced in the volume, including changes in regulatory relationships over time, chains of regulatory actors, and networks. We also draw lessons for regulatory policy from the volume as a whole, emphasizing the diverse goals that intermediaries pursue; the importance of how, and by whom, intermediaries are selected; the pathologies, such as regulatory capture, that may result from intermediaries’ character, goals, and origins; and opportunities to mitigate these pathologies through regulatory design.
... During this period, each scheme developed its own standards and conformity assessment systems and trained its own auditors (cf. Auld and Renckens 2017). This first period was marked by severe competition between schemes and accusations of 'greenwashing', often based on the methods standard-setters used to verify compliance with their standards (i.e., self-reporting) (Bartley 2003 ). ...
Assurance—an intermediary’s guarantee of compliance with regulatory standards—is critical for legitimate governance within the sustainability field. This legitimacy classically depends on the degrees of separation that are needed between the RIT roles to create trust in regulators and enforce the compliance of targets. Following the emergence of the ISEAL Alliance—an apex organization of sustainability standards-setters—there has been a general shift in the sustainability field whereby standard-setters have delegated some of their authority to certifiers and accreditors. This article examines this movement, through the analysis of four different models of assurance, and reveals increasing complexity being built into private systems of regulation in the sustainability field. There is an increasing incidence of multiple actors who engage in processes of intermediation and accreditation, which is rising in importance. The result is empirical and conceptual confusion around previously sacred notions such as independence and conflict of interest as measures of regulatory effectiveness.
Since 2010 the English planning system, like others across Europe, has undergone a series of market- oriented reforms. There has been a concerted attempt to make state organisations, and those in receipt of public funds, more entrepreneurial and financially proactive and independent. This paper focuses on one manifestation of these wider trends - the regulation of English Housing Associations [HAs] as examples of organisations that are under pressure to take on more financial risks and deliver a wider range of affordable housing for communities in need. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, the paper assesses some of the regulatory and governmental challenges that emerge in using market-led forms of coordination. It examines the role of new regulators and the ways which they seek to ‘co- produce’ regulations with HAs in more liquid and negotiated ways. We show that in reality decisions are taken in response to a polycentric mix of simultaneous regulatory pressures that act as gravitational pulls on the activities and decisions made by HAs, rather than enforcing a consistent and linear form of regulatory control. We conclude with wider reflections for planning theory and practice.
This chapter contributes to our understanding of the global gambling industry by shedding light on test houses, a central but largely hidden actor in gambling markets. Test houses are conformity assessment bodies that test, inspect and certify online gambling operators’ software and security management systems against technical standards and security requirements developed by regulators and international standard setting organisations. Situated between regulators and gambling operators, test houses are the central regulatory intermediary in this politically contested policy area.I argue that we must be attentive to the crucial role and position of test houses in gambling regulation and markets if we are to understand not only the structure of gambling markets and regulation, but also how relationships of dependence create networks of influence within markets and regulation. Gambling regulators, operators and software suppliers are reliant upon test houses in all aspects of the regulatory process. In turn, test houses are both central to the functioning of gambling market and commercially reliant upon gambling markets. I contend that these relationships of dependence raise questions about regulatory capture and independence, which can affect the extent to which regulation promotes public rather than private interests.
This article discusses the role played by regulatory intermediaries including non-state actors, professional associations and transnational networked agencies during the transposition of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive into Spanish national legislation. It aims to fill in the gap in prior research by extending the application of the Regulator–Intermediary–Target (RIT) theoretical framework to the field of audiovisual media regulation. The analysis focuses on the transposition stages of the Directive after the date of entering into force on 19 December 2018, up to 19 September 2020. Data are taken from publicly available national sources and European databases. Results show that the RIT framework helps to single out the main initiatives undertaken by relevant Spanish authorities and institutional players, their methods and responses to policy challenges. Mapping out regulatory intermediaries and network of relationships established among multiple actors facilitates our understanding on the complex forms of audiovisual governance and implementation of European law.
Within the international political economy (IPE) literature on global supply chains, there is growing debate about the effectiveness of private global supply chain solutions to address social and environmental problems. Most scholarship takes supply chain solutions at face value, investigating the circumstances under which they are effective, lacking, and how effectiveness could be incrementally improved. These studies have helpfully investigated operational and procedural issues associated with private governance and relationships between stakeholders in standard-setting processes. But the literature often loses sight of broader and more fundamental questions about whether or not private governance initiatives are actually working to solve the problems they’ve been established to address, like pollution, modern slavery, and global North and South inequalities. In this introduction to the Review of International Political Economy special issue on the hidden costs of global supply chains, we analyse key trends in the effectiveness of private governance solutions, drawing on our literature review of 290 academic journal articles and contributions within this collection. We argue that not only are global supply chain solutions falling short when it comes to many of the indicators that matter most, but they come with hidden costs – including unintended consequences, perverse effects, and unacknowledged impacts.
In this article, we analyse the role of regulatory intermediaries of the Better Cotton Initiative, a multi‐stakeholder initiative (MSI) in the global cotton value chain, with a regional focus on India and Pakistan. We conceptualize how the key roles of regulatory intermediaries — translating and verifying compliance with abstract rules in ways that make these rules practical and intelligible for target audiences (in this case, cotton farmers) — may be compromised by global value chain pressures and contradictory MSI requirements, thereby undermining the aim of mainstreaming sustainability standard systems. In other words, we theorize how MSIs can become subject to regulatory capture, serving the needs of global brands (for rapid upscaling, price minimization and verification) and sustainability standard bodies (contradictory demands for capacity building and compliance) at the expense of the intended beneficiaries — farmers at the base of global value chains. Based on an empirical analysis of the Better Cotton Initiative's implementing partners in Pakistan and India, we conclude that such weaknesses in standard implementation are likely to translate into poorer field‐level results in terms of ensuring the large‐scale, global mainstreaming of more sustainable commodity production sought by MSI practitioners.
Complex multi-actors and multi-level governance structures have emerged in areas that were traditionally exclusively the preserve of the State and treaty-making. The adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) affirmed a corporate responsibility to respect human rights to be implemented through human rights due diligence (HRDD), ie via management processes. The open-ended character of the UNGP generated the emergence of other soft instruments offering guidance to corporations in structuring HRDD. This contribution conceptualises the UNGP from the perspective of regulation as a principles-based exercise in polycentric governance reliant on regulatory intermediaries for interpretation. It then assesses the role of various sui generis normative instruments in providing interpretation to the UNGP and, how the presence of an additional layer of interpretative material contributes to the institutionalisation of responsible corporate conduct. The analysis of instruments drafted by international, non-governmental and business organisations reveals both a decentralising tension between different intermediaries due to disagreements and divergence concerning the precise extent of corporate human rights responsibilities, as well as attempts to centralise the interpretation of the UNGP. The article concludes by recommending some caution towards the employment of polycentric governance regimes and their lack of centralised interpretive authority in this domain of international law and suggests possible ways to formally establish centralised interpretation.
Cambridge Core - European Government, Politics and Policy - Private Governance and Public Authority - by Stefan Renckens
The growth of global value chains (GVCs) and the emergence of novel forms of value chain governance pose two questions for normative business ethics. First, how should we conceptualize the relationships between members of a GVC? Second, what ethical implications follow from these relationships, both with respect to interactions between GVC members and with respect to achieving broader transnational governance goals? We address these questions by examining the emergence of transnational eco‐labeling as an increasingly prominent form of GVC governance that is redefining the relationship between nominally independent firms. On the first question, we argue that GVCs occupy a middle ground between intrafirm and interfirm transactions, thereby posing a challenge to theoretical frameworks that attempt to apply ethical standards based on transaction types. On the second question, we argue that this unique institutional status leads to a range of novel ethical considerations and dilemmas for GVC members. Lead firms, their suppliers, and third‐party standard‐setters all confront new ethical quandaries when third‐party eco‐labeling is introduced to a GVC. The nature of these quandaries means that, while GVCs may be well‐positioned to serve as instruments of transnational governance, they are frequently not well‐oriented to do so. Our analysis marks an initial attempt to map the ethical considerations that apply to members of a GVC, and in doing so, places the literature on normative business ethics and transnational governance in a closer conversation.
Private governance regimes—instances where nonstate actors set rules that govern their behavior and/or the behavior of others—are increasingly common intermediaries between activists and corporations. Activists are often thought to drive corporations to participate in private governance. By participating, corporations hope to be shielded from activist pressures. Yet there are many instances where activists oppose particular private governance regimes, even ones that are seen as leaders in a sector. Why is this? This article contributes answers to this question by examining how activists’ different strategic orientations affect their perceptions of private governance. It unpacks three distinct ideal-type strategic orientations—prefiguration, targeting, and cooperation—activists may hold in their efforts to transform markets and the different forms of private governance each orientation will prefer. It then details how market entry conditions, sequencing and interactions, and feedbacks affect how activists are likely to engage the private governance regimes that develop in a given sector.
A key question in understanding regulation through independent intermediaries is the extent to which intermediary actions are either coordinated, thereby supporting consistency in regulatory application, or uncoordinated, leading to monitoring and enforcement disparities. This paper examines professional associations as one mechanism by which policy action may be coordinated in decentralized arrangements. Professional associations provide means and venues for members to interact, offer training and education that develops shared understanding of policy directives, are collective representation bodies for professional members, and may play an important role in establishing and enforcing collective standards for appropriate behavior. We examine these functions in the decentralized administration of United States organic food certification, focusing on two relevant professional associations – the Accredited Certifiers Association and the International Organic Inspectors Association. Drawing on multiple methods, including interviews and survey data, our findings indicate that professional organic certification associations provide valuable education and training, disseminate information, and facilitate knowledge sharing among administrative entities and with regulatory authorities. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects and limitations of professional associations for third-party regulation, and how accounting for professional association functions can improve our understanding of regulatory intermediary coordination and conduct.
Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (R) and a rule-taker or target (T). We set out an agenda for the study of regulation as a three- (or more) party relationship, with intermediaries (I) at the center of the analysis. Intermediaries play major and varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation, from monitoring the behavior of regulatory targets to building communities of assurance and trust. After developing the basic regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, we discuss important extensions and variations of the model. We then discuss the varieties of regulatory capture that may appear where intermediaries are involved.
This article addresses two specific puzzles in the area of regulation. The first is the engagement of regulatory intermediaries by the targets of regulation. The second is a tendency for regulatory intermediaries, once added to the regulatory landscape, to expand their roles independently and for reasons of self-interest. The article offers important insights into the roles, opportunities, and constraints of regulatory intermediaries, particularly because it moves beyond the unidirectional understanding of the regulatory process that is at the base of the RIT model. After exploring both puzzles, the article discusses how (target-oriented or self-interested) intermediation may increase the complexity and impact of regulatory capture. It concludes, however, that while the model of intermediation is sometimes flawed, regulators and targets are generally better off with the involvement of regulatory intermediaries than without it.
The editors of this volume highlight the role of intermediaries, alongside regulators and targets, as a way to better understand the outcomes of regulatory processes. Here, we explore the benefits of distinguishing a fourth category of actors: the groups whose interests the rules are meant to protect, the (intended) beneficiaries. We apply that framework to nonstate regulation of labor conditions, where the primary intended beneficiaries are workers and their families, especially in poorer countries. We first outline the different ways in which beneficiaries can relate to regulators, intermediaries, and targets; we then develop conjectures about the effect of different relationships on regulatory impacts and democratic legitimacy in relation to corporate power structures, specifically those embedded in the governance of global supply chains. We illustrate these conjectures primarily with examples from three initiatives—Rugmark, the Fair Labor Association, and the Fairtrade system. We conclude that it matters whether and how beneficiaries are included in the regulatory process.
In this article, we discuss the value of the RIT model for analyzing complex governance relationships in the regulation of food safety. By exploring food safety regimes involving the European Union and the Global Food Safety Initiative, we highlight the diverse and complex relationships between the actors in public, private, and hybrid regimes of food safety regulation. We extend the basic RIT model to better fit the reality of (hybrid) governance relationships in the modern regulation of food safety, arguing that the model enables disaggregation of these regimes into analytical subunits or “regulatory chains,” in which each actor contributes to and affects the regulatory process. Finally, we critically assess what the RIT model adds to alternative theoretical approaches in identifying, mapping, and explaining the different roles that actors play vis-à-vis others in regulatory regimes.
International trade is increasingly regulated through standardization, certification, and accreditation. To ensure that consumers can trust that the products they buy meet regulators’ standards, third-party certifiers and accreditation bodies, which “certify the certifiers,” act as intermediaries enlisted to deliver conformity assessment certificates to producers. This article explores how a few third-party certifiers have exploited their position between multiple regulators and diverse targets to invest in a growing number of sectors, expand globally, and become preferred advisers to regulators. As regulators enlist them to standardize certification practices, big third-party certifiers (BTPCs) advise regulators to set system-based regulations that are better suited to their own organizations and networks of international subsidiaries.
Regulation is typically conceived as a two-party relationship between a rule-maker or regulator (R) and a rule-taker or target (T). We set out an agenda for the study of regulation as a three- (or more) party relationship, with intermediaries (I) at the center of the analysis. Intermediaries play major and varied roles in regulation, from providing expertise and feedback to facilitating implementation, from monitoring the behavior of regulatory targets to building communities of assurance and trust. After developing the basic regulator-intermediary-target (RIT) model, we discuss important extensions and variations of the model. We then discuss the varieties of regulatory capture that may appear where intermediaries are involved.
Regulation is frequently viewed as a twoparty relationship between a regulator (R) and the targets of its regulation (T). This volume conceives of regulation as a three-party system, in which intermediaries (I) provide assistance to regulators and/or targets, drawing on their own capabilities, authority, and legitimacy. Our framework article for the volume, “Theorizing Regulatory Intermediaries: The RIT Model,” sets out a general theoretical model for analyzing the roles and implications of regulatory intermediaries in diverse settings. Examples of this three-party RIT model of regulation abound. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supplements its own inspectors by engaging private auditors to monitor food imports, and empowers other private bodies to accredit auditors (Lytton, this volume). Private transnational regulatory schemes such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Fairtrade International (FLO) also rely on independent auditors and accreditors (Auld and Renckens, this volume; Loconto, this volume).
In recent years a wide range of non-state certification programs have emerged to address environmental and social problems associated with the extraction of natural resources. This book provides a general analytical framework for assessing the emergence and effectiveness of voluntary certification programs. It focuses on certification in the forest and fisheries sectors, as initiatives in these sectors are among the most advanced cases of non-state standard setting and governance in the environmental realm.
Governance by disclosure has gained mainstream popularity as a means of social steering using the disinfectant power of information to improve the legitimacy and accountability of global governance. Set within these trends, certification programs—organized and coordinated by nonstate actors—exemplify efforts to encourage and control information flows to resolve environmental and social challenges within and beyond state boundaries. Formed in numerous sectors, certification programs attend to problems of labor exploitation, environmental degradation, and social injustice. For some the hope is that certification can be a tool for NGOs, investors, governments, and consumers to identify and support high performers, and hence, place upward pressure on sector-wide practices. This paper extends an initial analysis of the Marine Stewardship Council and the Forest Stewardship Council to other programs operating in the fisheries and forest sectors, and it assesses what the individual activities of nonstate certification programs mean for the practices that emerge in the growing field of private regulatory initiatives. Not unlike innovation in the knowledge economy, nonstate certification programs are generating new governance arrangements, mechanisms and norms which may have broad value for collective efforts to manage earth systems. However, we argue, incomplete or uneven transparency within the community of nonstate certification programs presents problems for this collective model of innovation. This unevenness can mean certain programs are gaining from the experiences of others, without reciprocating with information about their own successes and failures.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was created as a conservation tool – intended to provide “the best environmental choice in seafood” to consumers and to create positive incentives that would improve the status and management of fisheries. During its 15 years, the MSC, which has an annual budget of close to US$20 million, has attached its logo to more than 170 fisheries. These certifications have not occurred without protest. Despite high costs and difficult procedures, conservation organizations and other groups have filed and paid for 19 formal objections to MSC fisheries certifications. Only one objection has been upheld such that the fishery was not certified. Here, we collate and summarize these objections and the major concerns as they relate to the MSC’s three main principles: sustainability of the target fish stock, low impacts on the ecosystem, and effective, responsive management. An analysis of the formal objections indicates that the MSC’s principles for sustainable fishing are too lenient and discretionary, and allow for overly generous interpretation by third-party certifiers and adjudicators, which means that the MSC label may be misleading both consumers and conservation funders.
In recent years, transnational and domestic nongovernmental organizations have created non–state market–driven (NSMD) governance systems whose purpose is to develop and implement environmentally and socially responsible management practices. Eschewing traditional state authority, these systems and their supporters have turned to the market’s supply chain to create incentives and force companies to comply.
This paper develops an analytical framework designed to understand better the emergence of NSMD governance systems and the conditions under which they may gain authority to create policy. Its theoretical roots draw on pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy granting distinctions made within organizational sociology, while its empirical focus is on the case of sustainable forestry certification, arguably the most advanced case of NSMD governance globally. The paper argues that such a framework is needed to assess whether these new private governance systems might ultimately challenge existing state–centered authority and public policy–making processes, and in so doing reshape power relations within domestic and global environmental governance.
This paper deals with the challenging task of permanently organizing projects that include a broad range of actors: enterprises, social movement organizations and state actors. It focuses on a special type of standardization activity, namely eco-labelling, and is based on case studies of two Swedish projects/organizations: labelling of organic food and sustainable forestry. In this paper, I theorize about the concept of inclusiveness, which is seen as being instrumental for the creation of regulatory credibility and authority and argue that different types of members/participants have different types of power resources, which the standardization organization (SO) seeks to mobilize and control. The combination of these individual power resources brings action capacity and symbolic resources to the SO, including an image of independence. Moreover, the SO provides an organizational setting that, inter alias, helps interdependent actors to maintain a hold on each other, and forces them to engage in a dialogue and repeated interaction over time. This interaction can, in turn, result in common expectations and under- standings that are essential for the operations of non-state governance. However, the case studies also indicate difficulties in organizing such complex networks. It can, above all, be difficult to prevent a power shift in favour of organizations with large power resources. Key words. credi- bility; eco-labelling; environmental governance; inclusiveness; organiz- ing; private authority; standardization organization This article deals with the challenging task of permanently organizing projects that include a broad range of actors. More specifically, it regards
In the absence of effective national and intergovernmental regulation to ameliorate global envir-onmental and social problems, ''private'' alternatives have proliferated including self-regulation, corporate social responsibility, and public–private partnerships. Among them, ''non-state market driven'' (NSMD) governance systems deserve elevated attention because they offer the strongest regulation and potential to socially embed global markets. NSMD systems encourage compli-ance by recognizing and tracking, along the market's supply chain, responsibly produced goods and services. They aim to establish ''political legitimacy'' whereby firms, social actors, and stakeholders are united into a community that accepts ''shared rule as appropriate and justi-fied.'' Drawing inductively on evidence from a range of NSMD systems, and deductively on theories of institutions and learning, we develop an analytical framework and a preliminary set of causal propositions to explicate whether and how political legitimacy might be achieved. The framework corrects existing literatures' inattention to the conditioning effects of global social structure and its tendency to treat actor evaluations of NSMD systems as static and stra-tegic. It identifies a three-phase process through which NSMD systems might gain political legitimacy. It posits that a ''logic of consequences'' alone cannot explain actor evaluations: the explanation requires greater reference to a ''logic of appropriateness'' as systems progress through the phases. The framework aims to guide future empirical work to assess the potential of NSMD systems to socially embed global markets.
Nonstate certification programs have formed in the past 20 years to address social and environmental problems associated with production practices in several economic sectors. These programs embody the idea that information disclosure can be a tool for NGOs, investors, governments, and consumers to support high performers and hence, advocates hope, place upward pressure on sector-wide practices. Many unanswered questions remain, however, about information disclosure's practices and outcomes. We compare the use of procedural and outcome transparency in the rule-making and auditing processes of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). We highlight key differences in how transparency relates to accountability and legitimacy of the programs. The MSC uses transparency and stakeholder consultation instrumentally, whereas the FSC treats them as ends unto themselves. This underscores the importance of considering transparency alongside other governance aspects, such as who the eligible stakeholders are and who gets decision-making power. (c) 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Assurance—an intermediary’s guarantee of compliance with regulatory standards—is critical for legitimate governance within the sustainability field. This legitimacy classically depends on the degrees of separation that are needed between the RIT roles to create trust in regulators and enforce the compliance of targets. Following the emergence of the ISEAL Alliance—an apex organization of sustainability standards-setters—there has been a general shift in the sustainability field whereby standard-setters have delegated some of their authority to certifiers and accreditors. This article examines this movement, through the analysis of four different models of assurance, and reveals increasing complexity being built into private systems of regulation in the sustainability field. There is an increasing incidence of multiple actors who engage in processes of intermediation and accreditation, which is rising in importance. The result is empirical and conceptual confusion around previously sacred notions such as independence and conflict of interest as measures of regulatory effectiveness.
The editors of this volume highlight the role of intermediaries, alongside regulators and targets, as a way to better understand the outcomes of regulatory processes. Here, we explore the benefits of distinguishing a fourth category of actors: the groups whose interests the rules are meant to protect, the (intended) beneficiaries. We apply that framework to nonstate regulation of labor conditions, where the primary intended beneficiaries are workers and their families, especially in poorer countries. We first outline the different ways in which beneficiaries can relate to regulators, intermediaries, and targets; we then develop conjectures about the effect of different relationships on regulatory impacts and democratic legitimacy in relation to corporate power structures, specifically those embedded in the governance of global supply chains. We illustrate these conjectures primarily with examples from three initiatives—Rugmark, the Fair Labor Association, and the Fairtrade system. We conclude that it matters whether and how beneficiaries are included in the regulatory process.
In this article, we discuss the value of the RIT model for analyzing complex governance relationships in the regulation of food safety. By exploring food safety regimes involving the European Union and the Global Food Safety Initiative, we highlight the diverse and complex relationships between the actors in public, private, and hybrid regimes of food safety regulation. We extend the basic RIT model to better fit the reality of (hybrid) governance relationships in the modern regulation of food safety, arguing that the model enables disaggregation of these regimes into analytical subunits or “regulatory chains,” in which each actor contributes to and affects the regulatory process. Finally, we critically assess what the RIT model adds to alternative theoretical approaches in identifying, mapping, and explaining the different roles that actors play vis-à-vis others in regulatory regimes.
International trade is increasingly regulated through standardization, certification, and accreditation. To ensure that consumers can trust that the products they buy meet regulators’ standards, third-party certifiers and accreditation bodies, which “certify the certifiers,” act as intermediaries enlisted to deliver conformity assessment certificates to producers. This article explores how a few third-party certifiers have exploited their position between multiple regulators and diverse targets to invest in a growing number of sectors, expand globally, and become preferred advisers to regulators. As regulators enlist them to standardize certification practices, big third-party certifiers (BTPCs) advise regulators to set system-based regulations that are better suited to their own organizations and networks of international subsidiaries.
The rise of transnational nonstate certification programs has contributed to complex accountability relations surrounding efforts to hold companies accountable for their environmental and social impacts. Using the analytical lenses of internal and external accountability, we examine the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)—a fisheries certification program—to assess how its decisions about goals, engagement of stakeholders, and accountability mechanisms have affected the controversies facing the program and how it has sought to address them. We reveal a misalignment between environmental groups and the MSC. Both seek to advance sustainable fisheries, and the market campaigns of environmental groups have supported certification. However, the MSC has provided these groups limited influence over its governance; it has responded to external demands for accountability by focusing on internal accountability, and reforming its assessment and objection procedures. Environmental groups have responded by working to decouple their campaigns from supporting the MSC. Tracing the consequences of this misalignment therefore highlights the need to assess rival processes such as market and information campaigns to understand attempts to hold nonstate certification programs to account.
Recent decades have witnessed the rise of social and environmental certification programs that are intended to promote responsible business practices. Consumers now encounter organic or fair-trade labels on a variety of products, implying such desirable benefits as improved environmental conditions or more equitable market transactions. But what do we know about the origins and development of the organizations behind these labels? This book examines forest, coffee, and fishery certification programs to reveal how the early decisions of programs on governance and standards affect the path along which individual programs evolve and the variety and number of programs across sectors.
Preface Introduction: Pluralistic Actor Configurations and International Environmental Governance: Best and Worst Practices for Improving Environmental Governance Peter M. Haas, Steinar Andresen and Norichika Kanie 1. Agenda Setting at Sea and in the Air Stacy D. VanDeveer 2. Lessons Learned in Multilateral Environmental Negotiations Pamela S. Chasek 3. Actor Configurations and Compliance Tasks in International Environmental Governance Olav Schram Stokke 4. The Mismatch of Implementation Networks in International Environmental Regimes: Lessons from Different Agreements Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveira 5. Resilience and Biodiversity Governance: The processes of actor configurations which support and limit resilience Casey Stevens 6. Governance Components in Private Regulation: Implications for Legitimacy, Authority and Effectiveness Graeme Auld, Benjamin Cashore and Stefan Renckens 7. Actor configurations in the climate regime: The states call the shots Steinar Andresen, Norichika Kanie and Peter M. Haas Conclusion: Lessons from Pluralistic Green Governance Norichika Kanie, Peter M. Haas, Steinar Andresen Annex Masahiko Iguchi
In recent years a startling policy innovation has emerged within global and domestic environmental governance: certification systems that promote socially responsible business practices by turning to the market, rather than the state, for rule-making authority. This book documents five cases in which the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest certification program backed by leading environmental groups, has competed with industry and landowner-sponsored certification systems for legitimacy. The authors compare the politics behind forest certification in five countries. They reflect on why there are differences regionally, discuss the impact the Forest Stewardship Council has had on other certification programs, and assess the ability of private forest certification to address global forest deterioration.
Social movement scholars have demonstrated that foundation patronage channels social movements away from radical activities toward moderate goals, but accounts of how this process occurs are underdeveloped. Existing research typically focuses on foundations' differential selection of grant recipients (i.e., "cherry-picking" non-threatening groups) and transformation of particular recipient organizations over time (i.e., professionalizing grassroots groups). Scholars have overlooked ways in which foundations shape social movements by building or restructuring entire organizational fields. Foundation-led "field-building" activities may embed social movement organizations (SMOs) in new contexts and enroll them in new projects, thus channeling protest in subtle ways. This argument is illustrated with the case of forest certification - a form of governance created in the 1990s as a moderate, market-based alternative to disruptive environmental boycotts. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, I show how foundations coordinated their grant-making to build a field of forest certification, enrolled social movement organizations in this project, and used the leverage of protest to further their field-building agenda.
“To have mastered ‘theory’ and ‘method’ is to have become a conscious thinker , a man at work and aware of the assumptions and implications of whatever he is about. To be mastered by ‘method’ or ‘theory’ is simply to be kept from working.” The sentence applies nicely to the present plight of political science. The profession as a whole oscillates between two unsound extremes. At the one end a large majority of political scientists qualify as pure and simple unconscious thinkers. At the other end a sophisticated minority qualify as overconscious thinkers, in the sense that their standards of method and theory are drawn from the physical, “paradigmatic” sciences.
The wide gap between the unconscious and the overconscious thinker is concealed by the growing sophistication of statistical and research techniques. Most of the literature introduced by the title “Methods” (in the social, behavioral or political sciences) actually deals with survey techniques and social statistics, and has little if anything to share with the crucial concern of “methodology,” which is a concern with the logical structure and procedure of scientific enquiry. In a very crucial sense there is no methodology without logos , without thinking about thinking. And if a firm distinction is drawn—as it should be—between methodology and technique, the latter is no substitute for the former. One may be a wonderful researcher and manipulator of data, and yet remain an unconscious thinker.
This project evaluates the factors driving improvement of industry-sponsored private regulatory standards under conditions of competition in three-country contexts between 1995 and 2005. The paper provides a comparative analysis of regulatory competition in forestry in the USA, Sweden and Finland. While previous research has identified the importance of transnational supply chain pressure and of NGOs' direct targeting campaigns in diffusing and upgrading standards, this paper stresses the role of public comparison and environmental benchmarking that contributed to an upgrading of industry standards via competition between the Forest Stewardship Council and rival industry-sponsored schemes. The paper explores how transnational and national actors created important moments of public comparison in which substantive as well as accountability standards were ratcheted up while they diffused more broadly across industry. This project evaluates the role of environmental benchmarking in constructing and contesting the legitimacy of private regulation. © The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
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Two global certification and ecolabelling systems – the generic global dolphin-safe ecolabel and the global Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabel – are assessed for their present and potential contributions to improving biodiversity conservation in marine capture fisheries. The dolphin-safe ecolabel appears to have played a minor role in a reduction of dolphin mortality in tuna fisheries, but dolphin populations in the worst-affected area have not recovered, and it appears that the current level of dolphin by-catch sanctioned by present-day fishery management and the ecolabel is not effective enough to achieve population recovery. The MSC ecolabel has established a poorly expressed environmental standard that has resulted in variable interpretations by certifiers, creating an apparently systematic bias in application of the standard to the certified fisheries. Without substantial revision of both these systems, it seems unlikely that they will be able to make major contributions to marine biodiversity conservation because of barriers created by limitations in programme design, lack of robust linkages between the certification standard and biodiversity conservation outcomes, and unclear standards and their inconsistent application in the certification of fisheries.
The legitimacy and accountability of polycentric regulatory regimes, particularly at the transnational level, has been severely criticized, and the search is on to find ways in which they can be enhanced. This paper argues that before developing even more proposals, we need to pay far greater attention to the dynamics of accountability and legitimacy relationships, and to how those in regulatory regimes respond to them. The article thus first seeks to develop a closer analysis of three key elements of legitimacy and accountability relationships which it suggests are central to these dynamics: The role of the institutional environment in the construction of legitimacy, the dialectical nature of accountability relationships, and the communicative structures through which accountability occurs and legitimacy is constructed. Second, the article explores how organizations in regulatory regimes respond, or are likely to respond, to multiple legitimacy and accountability claims, and how they themselves seek to build legitimacy in complex and dynamic situations. The arguments developed here are not normative: There is no “grand solution” proposed to the normative questions of when regulators should be considered legitimate or how to make them so. Rather, the article seeks to analyse the dynamics of legitimacy and accountability relationships as they occur in an attempt to build a more realistic foundation on which grander “how to” proposals can be built. For until we understand these dynamics, the grander, normative arguments risk being simply pipe dreams – diverting, but in the end making little difference.
Objective. Despite the rich discussions about the role of information disclosure programs in environmental policy, our theoretical understanding of how and why information disclosure programs work lacks a clear framework. This article begins to fill that void by laying out some fundamental theories and concepts that underlie the empirical work on the subject. Methods. Basic theories arising from our knowledge of economics, psychology, and politics are compared. Previous research is analyzed with these theories in mind. Results. Research results confirm the plausibility of each of these theories, though the most compelling evidence so far suggests that shock and shame are key motivating factors for improved environmental performance by industry. Conclusions. The argument is made that our theoretical foundations must be understood better if we are to make sense of the empirical work on the subject. Policy implications are addressed.
Compliance processes in transnational private governance: Explaining variation in fisheries sustainability certification
- Graeme Auld
- Stefan Renckens
Wildhavens: An independent assessment of the Marine Stewardship Council
- Highleyman
- Amos Scott
- Amy Mathews
- Hank Cauley
Eco-labeling for change: The Marine Stewardship Council and the creation of sustainable fisheries? Master of Arts
- Aileen Bonilla
Fishery certification: Summary of analysis and recommendations
- Bridgespan Group
Strategic responses to institutional processes
- Christine Oliver
The logic of delegation: Congressional parties and the appropriations process
- D Kiewiet
- Roderick
- Mccubbins
- D Mathew
Micro-level mechanisms of interaction in the compliance-assessment process of fisheries certification
- Graeme Auld
- Stefan Renckens