Transnational rule-making organizations have proliferated in the area of sustainability politics. In this article, we explore why these organizations share a set of core features that appear overly costly at first sight. We argue that norms that evolved out of the social interaction among transnational rule-making organizations account for this phenomenon. Thus, in the early 1990s, an organizational field of transnational rule-making has gradually developed in the field of environmental politics. Responding to a broader social discourse about global governance that stressed a need for innovative forms of cooperation among different societal sectors, this organizational field gained in legitimacy and strength. A set of commonly accepted core norms, the increasing density of interaction among the field’s members, and the success and legitimacy ascribed to the field’s key players by the outside world helped to solidify the organizational field until it eventually developed a ‘life of its own’.
In this contribution, we explore the tensions that seem inherent in the claim that transparency policies "empower" the users of disclosed information vis-àvis those who are asked to provide the information. Since these tensions are particularly relevant in relation to voluntary disclosure, our analysis focuses on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as the world's leading voluntary corporate non-financial reporting scheme. Corporate sustainability reporting is often hailed as a powerful instrument to improve the environmental performance of business and to empower societal groups, including consumers, in their relations with the corporate world. Yet, our analysis illustrates that the relationship between transparency and empowerment is conflictual at all four levels of activity examined in this article: in the rhetoric and policies of the GRI as well as in the actual reporting practice and in the activities of intermediaries in response to the organization's disclosure standard. (c) 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While private authority beyond the state has become a popular theme of academic writing, the role of stakeholders in the Southern hemisphere as objects and subjects of private transnational governance has rarely been addressed in the literature. To fill this gap, this article examines three private transnational governance (PTG) schemes in the field of global sustainability politics and their relation to the South. The analysis shows that, contrary to common assumptions, PTG schemes exert a significant influence on Southern stakeholders. They shape the meaning of key normative concepts, induce discursive shifts that constrain the ways in which sustainability politics may or may not be framed, and establish new regulatory frameworks to which Southern actors need to respond. Yet, while Northern interests are well represented, the representation of Southern stakeholders remains low. It is particularly low in knowledge‐centered elements of the governance schemes. In contrast, where issues are explicitly framed in political terms and where decision‐making processes extend across multiple levels, the quality of Southern representation increases.
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