This special issue demonstrates the importance of interactions in transnational business governance. The number of schemes applying non-state authority to govern business conduct across borders has vastly expanded in numerous issue areas. As these initiatives proliferate, they increasingly interact with one another and with state-based regimes. The key challenge is to understand the implications of these interactions for regulatory capacity and performance, and ultimately for social and environmental impact. In this introduction, we propose an analytical framework for the study of transnational business governance interactions. The framework disaggregates the regulatory process to identify potential points of interaction, and suggests analytical questions that probe the key features of interactions at each point.

due process, accounting standard-setting, IASB,

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New modes of governance based on voluntary performance standards, rather than compulsory regulation, have gained salience in the European Union (EU). Can these new modes of governance offer a credible solution to the current challenges faced by EU policy-making? In this article, we assess the potential of new governance in the light of the theory of democratic experimentalism. This theoretical perspective suggests, first, that co-ordination by voluntary performance standards can lead to more effective rules and more opportunities for political participation; second, that the scope of this mode of governance in the EU is not confined to cases which are explicitly flagged as new governance; and third, that one of the main problems is how a voluntary mode of governance can coexist with compulsory regulation. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004.

No abstract

Canada, climate change, Germany, multinational corporations, regulation,

Political CSR has made great strides towards a better appreciation of the political involvement of corporations in global governance. However, its portrayal of the shifting balance between business and government in the globalized economy rests on a central, yet largely uncontested, assumption: that of a zero-sum constellation of substitution in which firms take on public responsibilities to fill governance gaps left by governments. This conceptual paper expands the political CSR perspective and makes three contributions to the debate on the political role of business and the role of government in global governance. First, it deconstructs the problematic assumptions underlying the zero-sum notion of governance gaps filled by corporations. Second, it offers a variable-sum mapping of how private and public authority interact in global governance where substitution is only one of four constellations. The mapping identifies ‘soft steering’ as a prominent mode of governments governing business conduct. Third, the paper theorizes ‘orchestration’, a ‘soft steering’ tool discussed in the global governance literature, from an organizational, corporate perspective. It identifies the mechanisms through which orchestration may address the barriers to corporate engagement with the public good and applies these mechanisms to the case of the Global Reporting Initiative.

This case study asks whether delegated, sectoral governance by private actors and arm’s-length agencies enhances policy efficacy or does sectoral governance require a shadow of hierarchy cast by government actors to deliver desired policy results? EU energy market liberalisation shows that sectoral governance successfully mobilises regulatory expertise, capacity and legitimacy and delivers workable norms and rules for market transactions in a complex policy environment. However, it also finds that the efficacy of sectoral governance mechanisms is constrained by distributive conflicts between different national jurisdictions and sector interests. If deadlock occurs, the European Commission as governmental principal casts a double shadow of hierarchy over sectoral governance agents: the threat of further legislation and of EU competition law. While both instruments enhance policy efficacy, they cannot substitute for the intrinsic rule-making qualities of sectoral governance: governance and government play complementary roles in the policy process.