Private Global Governance Research Articles

Public Interests and the Legitimation of Global Governance Actors

Notions of public interests or common goods present a major reference point for the legitimation of global governance and global governors, yet they are rarely subject to closer analysis. After highlighting how a connection to public interests plays a shared pivotal role in legitimating public and private global governance actors alike, this article suggests an expanded understanding of public interests as consisting of a substantive element, an individual interest-based element, and a procedural element. This allows us to study how public interests are framed, affected, disputed, and shaped in global governance, and how global governors are (de)legitimized with certain notions of public interests. It sheds light on how individual interests form public interests (without reducing the former to the latter or vice versa), how apparently neutral, technocratic, or expert-driven ideas of public interests are a matter of (global) politics, and how all the elements of public interests are imbued with power inequalities. The expanded concept of public interests is based on an integration of the governance literature on input, throughput, and output legitimacy with moralist, empiricist, and procedural models from political philosophy. Ultimately, in explicating the often implicit yet formative notion of public interests in global governance, this article argues that the legitimation of global governors does not only depend on whether or not they cater to public interests. Rather, the question is how they frame and affect the substantive, individual interest-based, and procedural elements of public interests, thereby constructing publics in global politics.

Aspiring rule-makers: Chinese business actors in global governance

Business actors from the global South have traditionally been marginalized in global private governance. But this may be changing. A growing number of business actors in China have become involved in global governance, with some showing an ambition to act as rule makers. What have motivated these Chinese companies? How do they go about promoting their initiatives? What is their relationship with the Chinese government in this endeavor? We explore these questions by empirically investigating two cases—the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) initiated by the Alibaba Group and the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO) supported by the State Grid Corporation of China. We identify several areas where the Chinese experience can enrich the literature on global private governance, which has been primarily derived from studies of actors from the global North.

Governing the Governors: The Global Metagovernance of Fair Trade and Sustainable Forestry Production

To promote environmentally sustainable corporate behavior, a complex system of global private governance operates where civil society groups play dominant roles. We argue that the concept of “metagovernance” developed in the public administration literature helps scholars and practitioners make sense of the constellation of actors, structures, and processes that have emerged in the field of global private governance. This article advances the metagovernance research agenda by providing a comparative application of the concept to two global private governance schemes: the fair trade and sustainable forest product certification systems. We examine the key organizations, arrangements, and relationships that constitute these systems to demonstrate that metagovernance in this sphere is produced heterarchically: multiple organizations within global private governance schemes are mutually responsible for their own coordination. We argue that employing metagovernance as an analytical tool enables the identification and appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of complex systems for “the governance of governance” from a holistic perspective. Related Articles Alejo, Antonio. 2019. “Contemporary Diplomacy, Global Politics, and Nongovernmental Actors: Dilemmas of the Multistakeholder Mechanism of Participation in Mexico.” Politics & Policy 47 (1): 105‐126. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12284Bance, Philippe, and Angelique Chassy. 2017. “The Rollout of the Multilevel Governance System: A Source of Reworking the Contingent Valuation Method?” Politics & Policy 45 (6): 1080‐1107. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12236Burau, Viola, and Carole Clavier. 2018. “Understanding Gaps in the Coexistence between Different Modes of Governance: A Case Study of Public Health in Schools in a Multilevel System.” Politics & Policy 46: 604‐629. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12269 Related Media FLOCERT. N.d. “How it Works.” https://www.flocert.net/solutions/fairtrade-resources/how-it-works/Forest Stewardship Council. N.d. “Who We Are.” https://ca.fsc.org/en-ca/about-usfsc‐watch.com. 2016. “Jari Certificate Suspension: Why Was it Ever Certified in the First Place?” https://fsc-watch.com/2015/12/22/jari-certificate-suspension-why-was-it-ever-certified-in-the-first-place/

A critique of the Global Pact for the environment: a stillborn initiative or the foundation for Lex Anthropocenae?

In May 2018, the process which may ultimately lead to the negotiation of a legally binding Global Pact for the environment formally commenced under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly. Expectations for the Pact are high, evidenced in particular by its multiple and overlapping objectives: to serve as a generic binding instrument of international environmental law (IEL) principles; to integrate, consolidate, unify and ultimately entrench many of the fragmented principles of IEL; and to constitute the first global environmental human rights instrument. In the wake of the impending intergovernmental process, the paper offers a thorough critique of the draft Pact in its present iteration. We do so with the aim of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the present draft Pact by interrogating: (a) its diplomatic and symbolic relevance and possible unique contribution at the policy level to global environmental law and governance, and (b) its potential at the operational level of IEL and global environmental governance, focusing on the extent to which the draft Pact accommodates both existing and more recent rules and principles for environmental protection. As the Pact’s primary ambition is to become a universally binding global treaty, it would be churlish not to recognise its potential for innovation, as well as the considerable opportunity that the negotiation of the Pact will have to generate broad-sweeping and positive impacts. However, our central thesis is that only if the Global Pact were to incorporate ambitious normative provisions to strengthen those public and private global governance efforts that aim to halt the deterioration of Earth system integrity, as well as to maintain and improve integrity, will it be able to offer a firm foundation of the type of Anthropocene Law, termed here as the Lex Anthropocenae, required to confront head-on the deep socio-ecological crisis of the Anthropocene.

Wanted: A Third Generation of Global Governance Research

A first generation of global governance research, principally in international relations (IR), has focused almost exclusively on formal mechanisms of interstate relations within public multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations and the World Bank. With these structures apparently in gridlock, many observers now regard global governance to be in crisis. However, a second generation of disparate scholarship spanning IR, European Union Public Policy (EPP) and International Law (IL) has begun to investigate new forms of public and private global governance as a response to the limitations faced by states in tackling pressing transboundary challenges. IR itself epitomizes this rebellion against old orthodoxies, having decisively shifted away in recent years from international relations to world politics, defined not simply by anarchic system structures, but also by an infrastructure built on liberal principles, and the presence of diverse social forces. This commentary proposes a research agenda which seeks to integrate insights across this theoretically and empirically-rich second generation of scholarship to ground a powerful third generation of global governance research, distinguished by a concern for the complexity and dynamism of global public policy-making and delivery in the 21st century.

Innovation Governance Competition: Payment Modernization Strategies in India and China

After decades of trade liberalization and ever greater integration of domestic economies into global markets, actors in both public and private sectors recognize the importance of innovation as a source of global comparative advantage. At the same time that governments in advanced market economies compete to foster innovation ecosystems within their domestic economies, private enterprises are complicating governments’ calculations by spawning new private global governance institutions. Payment card networks such as Visa and MasterCard are examples of global private regulators that can leverage their power in global markets to challenge the authority of local regulators. Public regulators in advanced market economies have used a variety of policy instruments to try to reassert their control over card networks, with only modest results. Both China and India have recently launched aggressive payment system modernization strategies as part of their national economic development plans. As part of those payment system modernization strategies, China launched China UnionPay in 2002, and by 2014, China UnionPay had become the second largest card network in the world, ahead of MasterCard and behind Visa. India is pursuing a more complex, standards-based payment system modernization strategy, and launched the RuPay card network in 2010 as part of its financial inclusion strategy. China and India have simply sidestepped the problem of how to control platform operators with de facto regulatory powers by launching competing national card networks to promote local economic development and block the local influence of global card networks at the same time.

Playing the politics of scale: Oxfam’s intervention in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

Development NGOs have become important partners in global private governance arrangements that aim to make agricultural commodity sectors more sustainable. Many of such NGOs endorse a rights-based approach to development. However, little is known about the different contributions of NGOs to the creation of private sustainability standards and the manner in which such contributions are realized. Based on the ‘politics of scale’ concept, this paper defines three dimensions at which NGO interventions in private governance arrangements may occur; namely, the creation of spaces of engagement, connecting spaces, and spaces of formal interdependence. In an in-depth case study, the paper discusses the opportunities, challenges, and limitations that Oxfam, an international development NGO, met in the process of institutionalizing human rights principles in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a global multi-stakeholder governance arrangement. Based on the empirical research, the paper formulates some conclusions regarding the extent to which development NGOs can regard private governance arrangements as vehicles for the practical deployment of rights-based approaches to development.

Global Adversarial Legalism: Global Private Governance of FDI as a Species of Global Administrative Law

This paper argues that the fractured nature of the governance of foreign direct investment ('FDI') has given rise to a two-faceted 'global adversarial legalism.' One facet of this global adversarial legalism, already much debated, is the concern that investment arbitration tribunals exercise an overly broad and perhaps illegitimate form of 'global administrative review' of State measures. This paper focuses on the other side of this global adversarial legalism that has not received sufficient scholarly attention: the advent of FDI-impacted individuals and communities alleging violations of voluntary transnational norms espoused by corporate actors involved in regimes of global private regulation. The primary example of this more recent phenomenon is the emergence of the Equator Principles, a regime of private global governance created by investment banks. The EPs standardize the banks’ environmental and social risk management of their investments in large infrastructure projects developed in host states whose weak regulatory capacities fail to prevent or mitigate project impacts.Just as arbitral clauses in public contracts can internationalize a dispute for resolution by a transnational arbitral tribunal, the EPs’ application to a project loan expands the substantive criteria applicable to project review and creates additional layers of review of corporate compliance with national and international norms. This interaction also creates a complicated dynamic with regard to State sovereignty and decision making related to national development agendas. By creating a global standard, the private regime empowers civil society actors and others not party to the underlying contracts to intervene in national debates and inter-governmental branch dialogue concerning project review and approval, thereby instantiating a quasi-administrative review that has powerful effects in the court of public opinion, even though - unlike traditional treaty-based transnational legal processes - the States have not themselves consented either to the substantive norms nor to the ‘jurisdiction’ of these processes. The paper also addresses the challenging normative implications of such adversarial legalism: how the protection of marginalized communities and ecosystems can impose broader societal transaction costs on national economic development.

Greening the United Nations Charter: World Politics in the Anthropocene

A revised version of this working paper has been published as: Biermann, Frank. 2012. Greening the United Nations Charter: World Politics in the Anthropocene. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. May / June 2012. A constitutional turn is needed to bring the UN system in line with the urgent needs of planetary stewardship and earth system governance in the 21st century. Yet how this could be organized in practice remains a challenge and subject to political and scholarly debate. This paper contributes to this debate by outlining four reforms of the UN system that would advance global decision-making by addressing major shortcomings in the current system: Lack of integration of economic and environmental policies in the UN system; institutional fragmentation and weakness of the environmental pillar of sustainable development; lack of high-level regulatory competence and oversight regarding areas beyond national jurisdiction; and insufficient integration of scientific insights into political decision-making. The reforms proposed would together create an Earth Alliance in the UN system, consisting of a high-level UN Sustainable Development Council, a World Environment Organization, a UN Trusteeship Council for Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, and an UN Global Environmental Assessment Commission.

Power and Networks in Worldwide Knowledge Coordination: The Case of Global Science

The article considers the global governance of knowledge systems, exploring concepts of power, networks, standards (defined as normative practices), and structuration. The focus is on science as a form of predominantly private global governance, particularly the self-regulatory and collaborative processes stretching across time and space. These constitute networks and are largely (and increasingly) outside the gaze of governments. Although science worldwide, but especially in the West, has been increasingly characterized by forms of scientific nationalism, in which science is funded, regulated, and harnessed for national governmental ends, the article argues that the growth of the new communicative technologies and the rise of openness as an ontology in the digital age is facilitating global science as a more private sphere, one of sociability rather than sovereignty, and one that is characterized by loose ties and curiosity-driven scientific ambitions.

Creating legitimacy in global private governance: The case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

This article suggests that understanding legitimization processes of private governance initiatives requires a multi-dimensional approach. This suggestion has been operationalized in three aspects that can be used to better understand such processes: legality, moral justifications, and consent/acceptance. These aspects are based on different theoretical traditions and are applied in an analysis of the process of creating legitimacy of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). This empirical research reveals the characteristics of the legitimization process of the RSPO and shows the value of a multi-dimensional approach. The three perspectives complement each other and deepen our insights in legitimization processes by revealing tensions and trade-offs in the different ways in which non-state market driven governance arrangements can create legitimacy.

Mechanisms of private meta-governance: an analysis of global private governance for sustainable development

One of the main characteristics of global governance for sustainable development is its fragmentation. Next to public regulations, there are often many private regulations in force on the same issue, which are induced by collaborations between businesses and NGOs. Traditionally, it is assumed that governments should play a central role in solving this 'orchestration deficit'. This paper argues that the capabilities of private meta-governance have been a neglected and undervalued topic in research. Taking some illustrative cases from the field of private global governance, it defines several private meta-governance mechanisms. Connected to them the paper also defines a specific meta-governance role of states.

Transformations of Vietnamese Shrimp Aquaculture Policy: Empirical Evidence from the Mekong Delta

International environmental and social concerns about tropical shrimp production have led to the emergence of private transnational governance and regulation. Using cases from Ca Mau we investigate how the shift to private transnational regulatory networks has changed the role of the government from a regulator to a facilitator of global private governance interests and arrangements. The rise of these various schemes has also been part of a shift from quantitative to qualitative policy goals within the Vietnamese aquaculture sector. In turn, this has led to new internal relationships, most notably the repositioning of private interests and community-based management within the Vietnamese state framework. We conclude that the ongoing transformation of the government's role in environmental shrimp governance requires mechanisms that foster improved participation and compliance between the state and private actors. To achieve this efforts are needed to better include local government at both communal and village levels and to use existing global market incentives more strategically.

Private-Public Interaction in Global Governance: The Case of Transnational Commercial Arbitration

Scholars of international relations and global governance are increasingly interested in the transnational commercial arbitration system. So far, they have tended to characterize the system as a form of private global governance. However, using a combination of empirical and legal analysis, this article draws attention to the critical role of the state in the transnational commercial arbitration system, and shows that both rule-making and enforcement in the system depend largely on interactions between private and public actors. By treating arbitration as a form of private governance, scholars run the risk of obscuring these interactions and hindering their understanding of how transnational economic activity is governed. This article therefore argues for a modest reorientation of global governance scholarship on transnational commercial arbitration in a direction that focuses more closely on private-public interaction. More broadly, this article suggests that understanding interactions between private and public actors is a key to understanding global governance in general, and it raises doubts about the analytical desirability of a sharp distinction between private and public forms of global governance.

Global Governance and the Certification Revolution: Types, Trends and Challenges

In the last two decades one can observe the emergence and development of private global governance regimes which regulate internationally manufactured and traded products. These private regulatory initiatives develop specific social and/or ecological standards. When products, organisations or production processes meet these standards they receive a certificate. This chapter outlines different types of private governance initiatives, analyses the major trends with regard to private governance and discusses the main challenges. The chapter stresses that there are many different types of initiative and argues that a typology framework should enable researchers to capture the dynamics in the field of private governance. For this purpose a governance matrix is developed in two dimensions, i.e. who sets the standards and how they are implemented. Secondly, this chapter identifies two major trends, namely a sharp increase in the use of certification systems and increasing recognition from (international) public authorities and policymakers. Finally, the chapter discusses four main challenges with which these systems are confronted, with a specific focus on scale and scope, legitimacy, coordination and cooperation and equity.

Challenges to Legitimacy at the Forest Stewardship Council

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global private governance system overseeing the sustainability and biodiversity of the world forestry system through certification of forests and forestry processes and products, and is perceived as the strongest of the various certification schemes available (Domask, Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government, and Society, 2003; Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics, 2004). It has seen more success in developed than developing countries in terms of amount of forest certified and number of chain-of-custody certificates issued, raising questions as to its ability to promote biodiversity Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics, 2004). A number of challenges have risen to the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC as a global governance system: alternative certification schemes, output and market access, cost of certification, plantations, and illegal logging. I examine each of these challenges as they pertain to the dimensions of pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications for global governance systems using ecolabel schemes, as well as a discussion of practical implications for the FSC in particular.

The Anti-Network: Private Global Governance, Legal Knowledge, and the Legitimacy of the State

Global private law has become the source of both anxiety and euphoria. Inherent in this fascination is the assumption that global private law threatens the legitimacy of the state by taking over its functions through new techniques of governance. In this article, I build upon research in one arena of global private governance, the production of legal documentation for the global swap markets, to challenge the most prominent assumptions about private law beyond the state. I argue that rather than focusing on how global private law is or is not an artifact of state power, a body of private norms, or a coherent legal system, we should view global private law as a set of institutions, actors, doctrines, ideas, documents, that is, as a specialized set of “knowledge practices.” Viewed from this perspective, global private law is not a radical departure from state law, but really more of the same. Ultimately, I suggest that the “threat,” if any, of global private law for the state lies instead in the way it replicates the work of the state in practical, mundane, and routine ways.