Transnational Standard-Setting Partnerships in the Field of Social Rights: The Interplay of Legitimacy, Institutional Design, and Process Management

Abstract

Transnational public-private partnerships (PPPs) spread significantly in the 1990s and can now be found in most policy areas. Best known are the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) Type II partnerships (Bäckstrand, 2006; Biermann et al., 2007) but there are also initiatives like the UN Global Compact (Rieth et al., 2007; Gregoratti, this volume) or the Forest Stewardship Council (Bernstein, 2004). There are an increasing number of publications on PPPs’ effectiveness and legitimacy.1 Nevertheless, while all this literature develops many ideas on why PPPs evolve and under what conditions they might be effective and legitimate, we still need to develop a deeper and more complex understanding of these subject matters. In our analysis, we want to assess the input legitimacy of PPPs in the context of other factors, and analyze how these factors translate into enhanced effectiveness, defined here as compliance with standards set by transnational PPPs.KeywordsGlobal GovernanceForest Stewardship CouncilCommon CodeSocial AccountabilityFair Labor AssociationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.