Grounding the politics of transnational private governance: introduction to the special section

With a focus on the concept of grounding, this special section argues that the politics of transnational private governance should be understood in the double meaning of, on the one hand, its local implementation and, on the other hand, practices of political contestation and translation. The concept of grounding thus allows for a localized focus on practices used by actors in transnational private governance. By doing so, we hope to make three contributions to the current debate. The first is to never lose sight that governance is first and foremost about politics; the second is to provide a conceptual framework making more explicit the intrinsic limits of transnational private governance efforts; the third is about the form of power exercised by transnational private regulatory initiatives in global production networks. This introduction provides historiographical and conceptual background to this special section, which brings in scholars across social sciences, including political science, sociology, law and philosophy. It introduces the contributions from research communities that usually remain separate in their analysis of standards used in global production networks in the domain of labour, environment, and human rights

Translating Technical Diplomacy : The Participation of Civil Society Organisations in International Standardisation

This article examines the participation of civil society organisations (CSO) in the various arenas of global governance with focus on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). While diverse studies recognise the difficulty of CSOs’ participation despite the growing importance of standards in the organisation of markets, little attention has been paid to how such involvement is likely to be reinforced in what we call ‘technical diplomacy’, the negotiating processes involving states and non-state actors geared toward setting specifications claiming to be based on scientific knowledge. Drawing upon scholarship in new forms of regulation in organisational studies, international relations, and science and technology studies, the paper argues that CSOs’ participation depends on multiple translation practices between lay- and expert-knowledge. Findings are based on an action-research project, INTERNORM, pooling academic and CSO participation in ISO technical committees. It suggests some promising directions for addressing the democratic deficit of technical diplomacy

Beyond the transatlantic divide: the multiple authorities of standards in the global political economy of services

This paper explores the plurality of institutional environments in which standards for the service sector are expected to support the rise of a global knowledge-based economy. A wide range of international bodies is able to define standards affecting the internationalization of services. Relying on global political economy approaches, the analysis uncovers the power relations underpinning the various forms of standards supporting a deeper integration of the market for services. Service standards are conceived as heterogeneous forms of transnational hybrid authority. The empirical study focuses on recent developments in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the European Union, and the US. In contrast to conventional views opposing the American system to the ISO/European framework, the paper argues that institutional developments of service standards are likely to face trade-offs and compromises reflecting contrasting models of standardization, not only between, but also across, those systems. While this undermines the conventional analysis of a transatlantic divide in standardization, it also shows that the variance between product and service standards is much greater in the European context and the ISO system than in the US, where it is hardly debate

Towards an evolutionary environmental regulation of capitalism : sustainable development 20 years after

The paper argues that by combining ecological economics, IPE and regulation approaches more closely, one may provide an account of the apparent contradiction between the utopian aspect of sustainable development and the ability of capitalism to pragmatically deal with ecological crises. It explores how ensuing institutional forms inevitably take sustainability claims into account. It assumes that such forms revolve around the emergence of a new type of evolutionary environmental regulation whose coherence is paradoxically at once open-ended, fragmented and hybrid. This feature clearly reinforces the extreme difficulty in thinking about ecological regularities. The paper analyses core elements of such institutional forms and how far they can be identified as a new type of fragmented evolutionary environmental regulation. Section 1 provides background on the notion of sustainable development. Sections 2 examines the prospects and limits of regulation theory on global ecological issues and presents lessons could be drawn from ecological economics and international political economy approaches for opening new routes to appraise current and future environmental concerns of capitalism. Section 3 explores the emerging form of evolutionary environmental regulation reflecting the apparently paradoxical situation we have reached, in which disillusion regarding sustainable development goes hand in hand with increasing awareness of the inescapability of a policy shift in its favour.SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT