ISEAL Alliance and the Administrative Governance of Transnational Sustainability Standards

Abstract

This article concerns the role of the ISEAL Alliance in formulating and enforcing administrative governance principles and procedures among sustainability standard-setting bodies. By utilizing the frameworks of meta-regulation and global administrative law, this article assesses whether ISEAL has been able to develop a regulatory capacity in practice. After first categorizing administrative governance norms found in these codes as ‘participatory’, ‘transparency’, or ‘reasoned decision-making’, this article offers an empirical analysis of the experiences of ISEAL’s members with respect to participation drivers, code compliance, their roles in writing the codes, and concerns about the future developments in ISEAL. In light of this empirical analysis, it is suggested that ISEAL’s regulatory capacities have been overstated. Finally, a growing emphasis on the impacts of sustainability standards is discussed in relation to problems it raises for the future significance of administrative governance principles and the accountability of sustainability standard-setting bodies.