LIST OF PANELS

This panel proposes to investigate the changing interaction of private and public actors in global governance arrangements from a perspective of political contestation.
 
The past two decades have seen a tremendous proliferation of non-state regulatory initiatives, schemes and organizations to govern business conduct andthe social and environmental conditions of global production (Abbott & Snidal, 2009; Bartley, 2007; Vogel, 2010). Mostly characterized as transnational private regulation or governance (Bartley, 2007; Graz & Nölke, 2008), these schemes range in institutional character from industry codes of conduct to multi-stakeholder and hybrid institutions, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative or the Forest Stewardship Council. They address issue areas as diverse as agricultural and forestry practices (Auld, 2014; Cashore et al., 2004; Grabs, 2018), financial reporting (Buthe & Mattli, 2011), labour standards (Fransen, 2011), and carbon markets (Green, 2010).
 
While earlier scholarship looked to these non-state arrangements to fill governance gaps left by governments perceived as absent or failing (Cashore et al., 2004; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011), there is an emerging consensus in the literature that governments and public policy remain central to the success or failure of private governance arrangements (Locke, 2013; Toffel et al., 2015). Recent scholarship has begun to foreground the private-public regulatory nexus (Knudsen & Moon, 2017)and the prominent role of governments(Bartley, 2014); and it has started to conceptualize and investigate patters of interaction between public and private actors (Bartley, 2011; Eberlein et al., 2014; Green & Auld, 2017; Gulbrandsen, 2014).
 
However, the extant literature has tended to adopt a problem-solving, “collaboration narrative” perspective (Coen & Pegram, 2015, p. 418)or a functional, “market-based” approach examining the demand and supply of private governance. Such a lens neglects important questions concerning the political nature of the phenomenon, particularly the political interests and strategies that inform the engagement of public and private actors, as well as political conflicts that often result.
 
We therefore propose to focus on the following research question: how does “politics” or political contestation, i.e. the political interests, strategies and conflicts of the public and private parties involved, affect the regulatory outcomes and impact of public-private interaction?
 
We know little about which combinations of public and private engagement may generate larger public-interest contributions, and, in particular, what role political contestation and conflict play in determining the trajectory and results of public-private interaction.
We do know that governments decide to support, adopt, or counter-act private governance initiatives and organizations not only based on considerations of policy efficiency; they also follow political calculus, which, we hypothesize, often reflects the influence of domestic industry or other organized interests. For example, there is increasing evidence that governments in the Global South seek to reassert control over Northern production and sustainability standards that potentially hamper their domestic industries, from an industrial policy perspective (Giessen et al., 2016; Schleifer, 2015).
 
Corporations, for their part, engage in private regulatory arrangements to manage material and reputational risk, often as a response to social pressure by NGOs and consumers (Matten & Moon, 2008). Yet - neglected by the literature that has dominated the study of the political role of business under the label of Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - there are strong barriers to corporate engagement with the public good, primarily corporate motivation (profit), ability (regulatory capacity) and the complexity of global governance (organizational uncertainty). Scholarship on private governance and Political CSR has yet to incorporate the basic corporate political interest that shape and sometimes curb or inhibit public regulation.
 
In sum, our panel offers to advance research on the intersection of private governance and public policy, by examining the political dynamics, interests, and strategies of the public and corporate parties involved. Our focus is on how these operate in different regional or issue contexts to promote or inhibit the governance ofcross-border business conduct for the public good.

References:

Abbott, K.W. & Snidal, D. (2009). The Governance Triangle: Regulatory Standards Institutions and the Shadow of the State. In W. Mattli & N. Woods (Eds.), The Politics of Global Regulation (pp. 44-88). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Auld, G. (2014). Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certification: Yale University Press.
Bartley, T. (2007). Institutional Emergence in an Era of Globalization: The Rise of Transnational Private Regulation of Labor and Environmental Conditions. American Journal of Sociology, 113(2), 297-351.
Bartley, T. (2011). Transnational Governance as the Layering of Rules: Intersections of Public and Private Standards. Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 12(2).
Bartley, T. (2014). Transnational governance and the re-centered state: Sustainability or legality? Regulation & Governance, 8(1), 93-109.
Buthe, T., & Mattli, W. (2011). The new global rulers: The privatization of regulation in the world economy. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Cashore, B., Auld, G., & Newsom, D. (2004). Governing through markets: Forest certification and the emergence of non-state authority. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Coen, D., & Pegram, T. (2015). Wanted: A Third Generation of Global Governance Research. Governance, 28(4), 417-420.
Eberlein, B., Abbott, K. W., Black, J., Meidinger, E. E., & Wood, S. (2014). Transnational Business Governance Interactions: Conceptualization and Framework for Analysis. Regulation & Governance, 8(1), 1-21.
Fransen, L. (2011). Corporate Social Responsibility and Global Labor Standards: Firms and Activists in the Making of Private Regulation New York: Routledge.
Giessen, L., Burns, S., Sahide, A., & Wibowo, A. (2016). From governance to government: The strengthened role of state bureaucracies in forest and agricultural certification. Policy and Society, 35(1), 71-89.
Grabs, J. (2018). Assessing the institutionalization of private sustainability governance in a changing coffee sector. Regulation and Governance. doi:10.1111/rego.12212.
Graz, J.-C., & Nölke, A. (2008). Transnational private governance and its limits. London
New York: London : Routledge, 2008.
Green, J. F. (2010). Private Standards in the Climate Regime: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Business and Politics, 12(3), 1-37.
Green, J. F., & Auld, G. (2017). Unbundling the regime complex: the effects of private authority. Transnational Environmental Law, 6(2), 284.
Gulbrandsen, L. H. (2014). Dynamic governance interactions: Evolutionary effects of state responses to non-state certification programs. Regulation & Governance, 8(1), 74-92.
Knudsen, J. S., & Moon, J. (2017). Visible Hands: Government Regulation and International Business Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Locke, R. (2013). The Promise and limits of private power promoting labor standards in a global economy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Matten, D., & Moon, J. (2008). "Implicit" and "Explicit" CSR: A Conceptual Framework for A Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility. The Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 404.
Scherer, A. G., & Palazzo, G. (2011). The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World: A Review of a New Perspective on CSR and its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48(4), 899-931.
Schleifer, P. (2015). Private Governance Undermined: India and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Global Environmental Politics, 16, 38-58.
Toffel, M. W., Short, J. L., & Ouellet, M. (2015). Codes in context: How states, markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards. Regulation & Governance, 9(3), 205-223.
Vogel, D. (2010). The Private Regulation of Global Corporate Conduct - Achievements and Limitations. Business & Society, 49(1), 68-87.

This panel invites paper proposals that investigate the changing interaction of private and public actors in global governance arrangements from a perspective of political contestation.
 
The past two decades have seen a tremendous proliferation of non-state regulatory initiatives, schemes and organizations to govern business conduct andthe social and environmental conditions of global production (Abbott & Snidal, 2009; Bartley, 2007; Vogel, 2010). Mostly characterized as transnational private regulation or governance (Bartley, 2007; Graz & Nölke, 2008), these schemes range in institutional character from industry codes of conduct to multi-stakeholder and hybrid public-private institutions, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative or the Forest Stewardship Council. They address issue areas as diverse as agricultural and forestry practices (Auld, 2014; Cashore et al., 2004; Grabs, 2018), financial reporting (Buthe & Mattli, 2011), labour standards (Fransen, 2011), and carbon markets (Green, 2010).
 
While earlier scholarship looked to these non-state arrangements to fill governance gaps left by governments perceived as absent or failing (Cashore et al., 2004; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011), there is an emerging consensus in the literature that governments and public policy remain central to the success or failure of private governance arrangements (Locke, 2013; Toffel et al., 2015). Recent scholarship has begun to foreground the private-public regulatory nexus (Knudsen & Moon, 2017)and the prominent role of governments(Bartley, 2014); and it has started to conceptualize and investigate patters of interaction between public and private actors (Bartley, 2011; Eberlein et al., 2014; Green & Auld, 2017; Gulbrandsen, 2014).
 
However, the extant literature has tended to adopt a problem-solving, “collaboration narrative” perspective (Coen & Pegram, 2015, p. 418)or a functional, “market-based” approach examining the demand and supply of private governance. Such a lens neglects important questions concerning the political nature of the phenomenon, particularly the political interests and strategies that inform the engagement of public and private actors, as well as political conflicts that often result.
 
We therefore propose to focus on the following research question: how does “politics” or political contestation, i.e. the political interests, strategies and conflicts of the public and private parties involved, affect the regulatory outcomes and impact of public-private interaction?
 
We know little about which combinations of public and private engagement may generate larger public-interest contributions, and, in particular, what role political contestation and conflict play in determining the trajectory and results of such public-private interaction.
We do know that governments decide to support, adopt, or counter-act private governance initiatives and organizations not only based on considerations of policy efficiency; they also follow political calculus, which, we hypothesize, often reflects the influence of domestic industry or other organized interests. For example, there is increasing evidence that governments in the Global South seek to reassert control over Northern production and sustainability standards that potentially hamper their domestic industries, from an industrial policy perspective (Giessen et al., 2016; Schleifer, 2015).
 
Corporations, for their part, engage in private regulatory arrangements to manage material and reputational risk, often as a response to social pressure by NGOs and consumers (Matten & Moon, 2008). Yet - neglected by the literature that has dominated the study of the political role of business under the label of Political Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) - there are strong barriers to corporate engagement with the public good, primarily corporate motivation (profit), ability (regulatory capacity) and the complexity of global governance (organizational uncertainty). Scholarship on private governance and Political CSR has yet to incorporate the basic corporate political interest to shape and sometimes curb or inhibit public regulation.
 
We are inviting papers that seek to advance the research on the intersection of private governance and public policy by focussing on the political dynamics, interests, and strategies of the public and/or corporate parties involved. How do political interests, conflicts and contestation operate in different regional and/or issue contexts to promote or inhibit the governance of cross-border business conduct for the public good?
 
We are open to papers originating in various disciplines (political science and public policy, business, law, sociology, anthropology) and adopting different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, quantitative or qualitative, including case studies.
 
We encourage, more specifically, authors to explore and investigate the following two areas and questions:
 
1) Single-country or comparative studies of how domestic politics, including organized interest pressure, informs government policy to engage with private regulatory standards or organizations, be it to adopt, adapt or replace private standards by public standards and policy. What is the difference of such dynamics between countries of the Global South (that are often the addressees of global regulatory standards) and those of the Global North? We especially welcome studies about and originating in countries of the Global South.
 
2) Studies that shed light on and elaborate the relationship between political dynamics on the one hand, and other factors impacting government policy towards private standards and regulatory organizations, such as regulatory capacity or the country’s position in global value chains, on the other. What is the specific role of politics, and organized interests, in determining government responses in various sectors/industries?
 
References:
 
Abbott, K.W. & Snidal, D. (2009). The Governance Triangle: Regulatory Standards Institutions and the Shadow of the State. In W. Mattli & N. Woods (Eds.), The Politics of Global Regulation (pp. 44-88). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Auld, G. (2014). Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certification: Yale University Press.
Bartley, T. (2007). Institutional Emergence in an Era of Globalization: The Rise of Transnational Private Regulation of Labor and Environmental Conditions. American Journal of Sociology, 113(2), 297-351.
Bartley, T. (2011). Transnational Governance as the Layering of Rules: Intersections of Public and Private Standards. Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 12(2).
Bartley, T. (2014). Transnational governance and the re-centered state: Sustainability or legality? Regulation & Governance, 8(1), 93-109.
Buthe, T., & Mattli, W. (2011). The new global rulers: The privatization of regulation in the world economy. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Cashore, B., Auld, G., & Newsom, D. (2004). Governing through markets: Forest certification and the emergence of non-state authority. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Coen, D., & Pegram, T. (2015). Wanted: A Third Generation of Global Governance Research. Governance, 28(4), 417-420.
Eberlein, B., Abbott, K. W., Black, J., Meidinger, E. E., & Wood, S. (2014). Transnational Business Governance Interactions: Conceptualization and Framework for Analysis. Regulation & Governance, 8(1), 1-21.
Fransen, L. (2011). Corporate Social Responsibility and Global Labor Standards: Firms and Activists in the Making of Private Regulation New York: Routledge.
Giessen, L., Burns, S., Sahide, A., & Wibowo, A. (2016). From governance to government: The strengthened role of state bureaucracies in forest and agricultural certification. Policy and Society, 35(1), 71-89.
Grabs, J. (2018). Assessing the institutionalization of private sustainability governance in a changing coffee sector. Regulation and Governance. doi:10.1111/rego.12212.
Graz, J.-C., & Nölke, A. (2008). Transnational private governance and its limits. London
New York: London : Routledge, 2008.
Green, J. F. (2010). Private Standards in the Climate Regime: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Business and Politics, 12(3), 1-37.
Green, J. F., & Auld, G. (2017). Unbundling the regime complex: the effects of private authority. Transnational Environmental Law, 6(2), 284.
Gulbrandsen, L. H. (2014). Dynamic governance interactions: Evolutionary effects of state responses to non-state certification programs. Regulation & Governance, 8(1), 74-92.
Knudsen, J. S., & Moon, J. (2017). Visible Hands: Government Regulation and International Business Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Locke, R. (2013). The Promise and limits of private power promoting labor standards in a global economy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Matten, D., & Moon, J. (2008). "Implicit" and "Explicit" CSR: A Conceptual Framework for A Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility. The Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 404.
Scherer, A. G., & Palazzo, G. (2011). The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World: A Review of a New Perspective on CSR and its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48(4), 899-931.
Schleifer, P. (2015). Private Governance Undermined: India and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Global Environmental Politics, 16, 38-58.
Toffel, M. W., Short, J. L., & Ouellet, M. (2015). Codes in context: How states, markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards. Regulation & Governance, 9(3), 205-223.
Vogel, D. (2010). The Private Regulation of Global Corporate Conduct - Achievements and Limitations. Business & Society, 49(1), 68-87.