On Tim Bartley’s, Rules without Rights: Land, Labor and Private Authority in the Global Economy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018

Abstract

Correspondence: Sigrid.quack@uni-due.de Rules without Rights by Tim Bartley is a comprehensive and deeply researched book, building on more than 15 years of research on the development of transnational private governance of forests and labor in different world regions, including the USA, Europe and Asia. Today the topic of the book is even more salient than when Bartley started it with a lot of foresight. The growing economic interdependence of the global economy makes it increasingly impossible for national states to regulate the negative externalities of transnational companies’ production models in isolation from each other; yet, multi-lateral governance has been facing stalemate in many policy fields for more than a decade. In this situation, transnational private governance has been considered, promoted and established by some as one possible avenue to harness and combat negative effects on the environment and on the working conditions of labor in global production chains. But to what extent is it able to deliver the promised results?