The politics of norm domestication in private transnational business regulation: A typology and illustrations

Abstract

AbstractScholars and practitioners of global private business regulation have often recognised the importance of political and institutional dynamics “on the ground,” in shaping the degree to which social and environmental regulatory norms are institutionalised or resisted at the local level. Local dynamics of norm contestation generate dilemmas for global regulators who aspire to be responsive to varied contexts in producing countries without “watering down” global regulatory agendas. Drawing on a range of empirical illustrations from Southeast Asia and Latin America, this paper develops a typology of domestication strategies currently being used by global private regulators and examines the effects of these strategies on supporting or undermining the overall values and purposes of global regulatory agendas. In the presence of pervasive local contestation surrounding global regulatory norms, norm domestication strategies are shown to offer important means of countering challenges to the power and legitimacy of global regulators. Nonetheless, the effects of such strategies remain highly contingent on path‐dependent contests between competing regulatory coalitions at both local and global levels.