Private Global Business Regulation - Berkeley...

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Private GlobalBusiness RegulationDavid VogelHaas School of Business, Department of Political Science, University of California,Berkeley, California 94720; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2008. 11:261–82

The Annual Review of Political Science is online athttp://polisci.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053106.141706

Copyright c© 2008 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

1094-2939/08/0615-0261$20.00

Key Words

corporate social responsibility, self-regulation, nonstate regulation,civil regulations, global governance

AbstractRegulations that govern the social and environmental impacts ofglobal firms and markets without state enforcement are a relativelynew dimension of global business regulation. The growth of suchvoluntary “civil regulations” reflects both the expansion of legiti-mate authority in the global economy outside the state and the in-creasing use of alternative regulatory instruments to govern firms,including self-regulation, market-based instruments, and soft laws.In response to global social activism, many firms have adopted vol-untary regulatory standards to avoid additional regulation and/or toprotect their reputations and brands. Activists have targeted highlyvisible firms and have been willing to work cooperatively with them.The most important civil regulations are multi-stockholder codes,whose governance is shared by firms and nongovernmental organi-zations (NGOs), and which rely on product and producer certifi-cations. Such codes face the challenge of acquiring legitimacy andof persuading both firms and NGOs of the value of their standards.The emergence of civil regulation addresses but does not resolve thechallenge of making global firms and markets more effectively anddemocratically governed.

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Review in Advance first posted online on January 9, 2008. (Minor changes may still occur before final publication online and in print.)

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CSR: corporatesocial responsibility

INTRODUCTION

This article selectively reviews the scholarlyliterature on a relatively new dimension of thegovernance of international business, namelycodes, regulations, and standards that are notenforced by any state and that address the so-cial and environment impacts of global firmsand markets, especially in developing coun-tries. Closely associated with the principlesand practices of corporate social responsibil-ity (CSR), socially focused voluntary globalbusiness regulations, also referred to as civilregulations, have expanded significantly sincethe early 1990s (Zadek 2001). Approximately300 codes now govern most major global eco-nomic sectors, including energy, minerals andmining, forestry, chemicals, textiles, apparel,footwear, sporting goods, project finance, andcoffee and cocoa.

Although there is an extensive body of aca-demic research on voluntary global businesscodes and CSR, only a portion of it has beenwritten by political scientists, primarily by stu-dents of international relations. Accordingly,this article selectively includes contributionsfrom other fields, including law, sociology,management, business ethics, and interna-tional and development studies. Its aim is tocritically review a broad range of scholarshipthat is relevant to understanding the emer-gence, structure, and impact of civil regula-tion, and its significance as a new and evolvingdimension of global economic governance. Italso identifies the shortcomings of this liter-ature and outlines an agenda for future re-search.

THE RISE OF GLOBALCIVIL REGULATION

Haufler (1999) was one of the first political sci-entists to publish a study of global civil regula-tion. Her essay appears in an edited volume onthe changing role of business in contemporaryworld affairs whose purpose is to challengethe assumption of many regime theories thatstates are the primary, if not exclusive, partic-

ipants in international regimes. The volumeexplores how nonstate actors are “increasinglyengaged in authoritative decision-making thatwas previously the prerogative of sovereignstates, describing how and why frameworksfor governing international economic trans-actions are created and maintained by the pri-vate sector, both with and without govern-ment cooperation” (Cutler et al. 1999, p. 16).

Haufler explores the emergence of globalenvironmental industry self-regulation. Go-ing beyond compliance with legal require-ments, many global firms have demonstratedincreased willingness to assume responsibilityfor ameliorating their negative environmentalimpacts. Haufler argues that there has been asignificant change in corporate norms regard-ing environmental practices, due in part to theincreased awareness by many firms and indus-tries of the benefits of eco-efficiency. How-ever, when compared to the other examplesof private business self-governance exploredin the Cutler et al. volume, such as onlinecommerce, the management of internationalmineral markets, and marine transport, pri-vate authority structures for environmentalgovernance remained relatively undevelopedin 1999. They did not (yet) constitute an inter-national regime as defined by Krasner (1982,p. 2) as “principles, norms, rules and decision-making processes around which actor expec-tations converge in a given issue area.”

In The Public Role for the Private Sector:Industry Self-Regulation in a Global Economy,Haufler (2001) documents the growth of pri-vate regulatory standards for environmentalprotection, worker rights, and data privacy.She primarily attributes these developmentsto the public pressures of activist campaignsand the threat of regulation. Haufler charac-terizes the substantial growth of industry self-regulation across multiple sectors as an impor-tant “new source of global governance, thatis mechanisms to reach collective decisionsabout transnational problems with or with-out government participation” (Haufler 2001,p. 1). She observes that private regulationsappeal to both global firms and western

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governments because they address the con-cerns of critics of economic globalizationwithout increasing the regulatory burdens onfirms, which would risk undermining theirglobal competitiveness.

Although Haufler presents some evidenceof improved industry practices, she concludesthat industry self-regulation faces consider-able organizational and enforcement prob-lems and is therefore unlikely to prove anadequate response to the market and polit-ical failures associated with economic glob-alization. “While industry self-regulation hasbecome a key component of the policydebate. . . . The problems that self-regulationattempts to address are often problems ofnational governance, and it is there thatmost responsibility still rests” (Haufler 2001,pp. 3, 121). Her mixed but, on balance, skepti-cal appraisal of the actual and potential impactof voluntary international business regulationis consistent with the conclusions of otherresearchers.

Haufler’s analysis makes an important dis-tinction between traditional industry self-regulation and newer codes of conduct. Tra-ditional self-regulation, which can be tracedback to medieval Europe, primarily involvestechnical rules and guidelines for various ma-terials, products, and processes aimed at im-proving coordination and lowering transac-tion costs. More recent industry codes, suchas the Sullivan Principles for business con-duct in South Africa during the apartheidregime, focus on the social impact of business.Originated in response to activist pressures,these newer forms of industry self-regulationpoliticize business decision making, pressur-ing firms to make expenditures and commit-ments they would not otherwise have made.They are also more likely to either directlyor indirectly involve political constituenciesoutside the firm. “One of the most signifi-cant changes in recent years is that the ‘who’in ‘who governs?’ must now be expanded toinclude the participation of nongovernmen-tal and noncorporate actors” (Haufler 2006,p. 92). However, not all civil regulations pro-

NGO:nongovernmentalorganization

vide opportunities for public participation,and virtually all “public” participation is bywestern activists.

This expansion of legitimate authority inthe global economy outside the state is fur-ther explored in a volume edited by Hall &Biersteker (2002). The authors describe whyand how this authority is also being exer-cised by private sector markets, market actors,nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), andtransnational actors. This book’s intellectualcontribution is to take the concept of globalprivate authority “one step beyond the in-ternational political economy by examiningthe authoritative dimensions of other private,nonstate and nonmarket based actors in thecontemporary international system,” includ-ing those that rely on moral authority (Hall& Biersteker 2002, p. 7). The governance di-mensions of moral authority are describedby Lipschutz & Fogel (2002), who exam-ine the privatization of environmental regu-lation through the growth of voluntary busi-ness codes and certification standards. Whileacknowledging the accomplishments of somevoluntary standards, Lipschutz & Fogel, likeHaufler, remain skeptical of the capacity ofregulations that rely on market incentivesrather than government mandates to pro-vide a stable foundation for moral action byprofit-seeking firms. However, like Haufler,Lipschutz & Fogel (2002) do not analyze orexplain variations in the effectiveness of suchregulations.

“Governance without government” haslong been observed and theorized by politicalscientists (e.g., Rosenau & Czempiel 1992).For example, Kobrin (1998, pp. 383–84) de-scribes a “postmodern world of multiple andoverlapping authorities: sovereign and non-sovereign, territorial and non-territorial.”Studies of civil regulation often explicitly sit-uate its emergence in the context of changesin the structure of global governance. Thusthe growth of civil regulation has beencharacterized as “a shift in global businessregulation from state-centric forms towardnew multilateral, nonterritorial modes of

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regulation, with the participation of privateand nongovernmental actors” (Scherer et al.2006, p. 506). According to Ruggie (2004a,p. 519), “the effect of the new global publicdomain is not to replace states, but to em-bed systems of governance in broader globalframeworks of social capacity and agency thatdid not previously exist.” Similarly, Falkner(2003) suggests that civil regulation repre-sents not a straightforward power shift awayfrom governments and toward firms butrather a movement toward a more complexrelationship between private and public ac-tors. Abott & Snidal (2006) describe the emer-gence of a complex “governance triangle”in which many international standards arenow selected, implemented, monitored, andenforced by varying combinations of states,firms, and NGOs. The role of private regu-lation as a new form of global environmentalgoverance beyond the state is also explored indepth by Pattberg (2007).

CIVIL REGULATIONSAS SOFT LAWS

Civil regulations are soft laws. States have of-ten chosen softer forms of governance as away of facilitating international cooperationbecause of the significant costs and limita-tions of enacting legally binding standards(Abbott & Snidal 2000, Shelton 2000, Morth2004). Forms of soft law range from pri-vate and voluntary codes and certification andlabeling systems to transparency obligationson the part of governments. Its defining fea-ture is that compliance depends on the vol-untarily supplied participation, resources, andconsensual actions of governments and/orfirms. As Grant & Keohane (2005, p. 35) ob-serve in another context, “When standards arenot legalized, we would expect accountabilityto operate chiefly through reputation and peerpressures, rather than in more formal ways.”

Hard Choices, Soft Law: Voluntary Standardsin Global, Trade, Environment and Societal Gov-ernance presents a detailed and comprehensiveanalysis of the increasing reliance on soft law

mechanisms to govern business on the part ofstates, firms, and NGOs (Kirton & Trebilcock2004). It primarily focuses on the role of bothstate and nonstate soft law on labor and envi-ronmental standards in developing countriesat both the national and international levels.The soft law approach is said to offer manyadvantages, including timely action when gov-ernments are stalemated or otherwise unableto effectively respond to the challenges of eco-nomic globalization. However, soft laws oftenlack the legitimacy and enforcement mech-anism of hard law. The editors predict thatmany of the critical issues in global regulatorygovernance will revolve around the shiftingrelationship between hard and soft laws, andbetween state and nonstate regulation. Theycorrectly emphasize that soft laws must be un-derstood as a complement to hard laws and nota substitute for them.

CIVIL REGULATIONSAND TRADE AGREEMENTS

The relationship of civil regulations withtrade agreements is discussed by Hockin(2004), MacLaren (2004), Ostry (2004),Wilkie (2004), Trebilcock (2004), Webb &Morrison (2004), and Bernstein & Hannah(2006). In part owing to pressures from NGOsand trade unions, some regional and bilat-eral trade agreements initiated by the UnitedStates and the European Union now linkmarket access to the labor and environmen-tal standards and the human rights prac-tices of their trading partners (Aaronson &Zimmerman 2008). These agreements oftencomplement the civil regulations of firms thathave established voluntary standards for theirsuppliers in developing countries. Much to thedisappointment of many activists, the WorldTrade Organization (WTO) typically doesnot permit market access to be linked todomestic labor or environmental standards.However, the certification and sourcing stan-dards of civil regulations represent a majorloophole in WTO rules: Global firms canrefuse to import products from suppliers who

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do not comply with their standards, whereasstates generally cannot. Similarly, whereasstate-based labeling standards and require-ments fall under the WTO’s jurisdiction, vol-untary social and environmental labels byfirms currently do not.

An important advantage of civil regula-tions is that they essentially bypass ongoingconflicts about state sovereignty, which haveoften restricted western governments fromusing trade policies to affect the domestic reg-ulations of developing countries. Thus, iron-ically, WTO rules have created an importantincentive for using voluntary, private stan-dards rather than public ones, since the lat-ter can be more readily challenged as non-tariff trade barriers. Although the adoptionof civil regulations by governments wouldclearly strengthen their effectiveness, it wouldalso subject them to WTO scrutiny—unlessthey were recognized as legitimate interna-tional standards. Yet the fact that civil reg-ulations have established different standardsfor similar products, sectors, or processes willmake it more difficult for any of them to berecognized as international standards.

THE BLURRING OF PRIVATEAND PUBLIC REGULATION

The growth of private international businessregulation can also be understood in the con-text of increased reliance on regulatory in-struments other than command and controlto regulate the social conduct of firms. “Self-regulation has come of age; it represents an in-creasingly viable alternative to the market andthe state” (Porter & Ronit 2006, p. 41). Manydomestic corporate practices in the UnitedStates and Europe are governed by volun-tary agreements or codes of environmentalmanagement practice—some of which havebeen promoted by states and others estab-lished by firms or NGOs (Nash & Ehrenfeld1997, Brink 2002, Webb 2004, Morgenstern& Pizer 2007). The market-based regulatorymechanisms employed by many civil regu-lations, namely producer certification, prod-

uct labeling, third-party auditing, and infor-mation disclosure, have also been used asdomestic regulatory instruments by govern-ments (Andrews 1998). An important vol-untary global environmental standard, ISO14001, “fits within an emerging paradigmshift in environmental law, from a media-specific ‘command-and-control’ approach tocontrolling emission and wastes to an ap-proach more focused on voluntary, incentive-based, market-based, and information-basedapproaches” (Roht-Arriaza 2000, p. 273).

However, the boundaries between volun-tary and mandatory regulations, state andnonstate regulations, private and public law,and hard and soft law cannot always be sharplydrawn. To the extent that firms have sub-scribed to civil regulations because of threatsto their market positions or to avoid gov-ernment regulation, they are voluntary onlyin a legal sense. More broadly, “the distinc-tion between mandatory and voluntary is bestthought of not as a dichotomy, but as the endsof a continuum” displaying varying degreesof corporate discretion (Koenig-Archibugi2004, p. 122). The relationship between pri-vate and public regulation is also dynamic;soft laws can become harder, and norms canbecome law (e.g., the important case of in-ternational human rights) (Risse et al. 1999).Cutler (1997, pp. 266, 280) insightfully writesthat “the private/public distinction is a histor-ically specific analytical construct that has un-dergone revision with changing material, ide-ological and institutional conditions,” addingthat “today the distinction obscures more thanit clarifies about the nature of power and au-thority in international relations,” an assess-ment that is shared by other studies of interna-tional relations that examine private businessregulation.

CIVIL REGULATION AS GLOBALBUSINESS REGULATION

The emergence of civil regulations as acomponent of global business regulationis primarily attributed to three related


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developments. The first is economic global-ization itself. In 2003 the number of transna-tional firms was estimated at 63,000 firms,which had more than 800,000 subsidiaries andmillions of suppliers (Ruggie 2003); in 2005,transnational firms accounted for one tenthof the world’s GDP and one third of all ex-ports (Clapp 2005). Accordingly, the invest-ment and management decisions of globalfirms and their relationship with their globalsupply chains now play a key role in shap-ing labor practices, environmental quality, andhuman rights conditions, especially in devel-oping countries.

The second related development is thelack of adequate state mechanisms at boththe national and international levels to gov-ern global firms and markets. Whether, orto what extent, the state is “in retreat” re-mains a subject of lively debate among po-litical scientists (Strange 1996). Nonetheless,economic globalization does appear to havemade it “more difficult for national govern-ments to hold corporations accountable thanin the past” (Keohane 2003, p. 146). Underly-ing virtually every scholarly and popular dis-cussion of global civil regulation is the claimthat the global economy suffers from a demo-cratic governance deficit, often attributed tothe constraints posed by global competitivepressures on the willingness and capacity ofstates to effectively regulate both global anddomestic firms.

According to Lipschutz & Rowe (2005),whose book, Globalization, Governmentalityand Global Politics, presents a comprehen-sive and highly critical study of civil regu-lation, the turn to politics though marketsreflects the dominance of neoliberal ideol-ogy and an associated decline in state con-trols over business at both the national andinternational levels. Bernstein (2005, p. 160)states that “civil regulations represent an in-novative form of governance that arose inpart owing to the legitimacy and performancelimitations in traditional forms of interstategovernance.” According to Knill & Lehmkuhl(2002, pp. 42, 44), “civil regulation is intended

to compensate for the decreasing capacitiesof national governments for providing pub-lic goods [as]. . . . internationalization yieldsan increasing gap between territorially boundregulatory competence at the national leveland emerging problems of an internationalscope.”

THE ROLE OFNONGOVERNMENTALORGANIZATIONS

The emergence of what has been character-ized as a “global public domain” is closelylinked to another dimension of globaliza-tion, namely the increasingly prominent roleof nonstate actors in global politics (Ruggie2004). More than 30,000 NGOs now operateinternationally and ∼1000 draw their mem-bership from three or more countries (Ruggie2007). There is an extensive literature on whathas been described as “transnational civil soci-ety” (Batliwala & Brown 2006), “transnationalcivil activism” (Tarrow 2005), “global citizenaction” (Edwards & Gavanta 2001), “globalsocial movements” (Cohen & Rai 2000), “ac-tivists beyond borders” (Keck & Kathryn1998), and “global civil society” (Lipschutz2005). According to Wapner (1995, p. 340),the increasing politicization of global civil so-ciety requires scholars to clarify conceptuallythe political character of governing efforts notassociated with the state. He adds that “a fail-ure to take note of the world civic efforts ofnonstate actors leaves one with only an incom-plete understanding of world politics itself.”

While studies of international advocacynetworks and organizations primarily explorethe efforts of these groups to influence thepolicies of national governments and in-tergovernmental organizations, several alsodescribe the strategies of NGOs that havechosen to focus some or all of their politi-cal activity directly on the private sector. Thischoice stems in part from NGOs’ frustrationat the considerable power exercised by cor-porations over national governments and in-tergovernment institutions and the resultant

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failures to establish legally binding globalbusiness regulations—a failure noted in sev-eral studies of civil regulation. For example,during the 1970s, the International LaborOrganization and the United Nations Com-mission on Transnational Corporations bothunsuccessfully attempted to develop legallybinding codes of global business conduct. Oneimportant civil regulation, the certificationstandards of the Forest Stewardship Council(FSC), emerged directly from the inability ofNGOs to persuade governments to enact aneffective international forestry treaty (Clapp2005).

Civil regulation has thus also emerged inorder to “help empower global civil society byproviding activist groups with political leversthat exist outside state systems” (Falkner 2003,p. 79). Its emergence is “said to offer a new anddifferent model for framing, voicing, and im-plementing market and public policy rules,”a model that can make business rule mak-ing more democratic (Webb 2004, p. 23).“Engaging the corporate sector in the rapidlyexpanding web of corporate social respon-sibility initiatives can help narrow the gov-ernance gaps that now exist between globalmarkets and state-based authority structures”(Ruggie 2007, p. 35). By providing opportu-nities for consumers and investors to engagein politics via markets, civil regulation hascreated new sites for political activity outsidestates (Micheletti & Stolle 2007).

Private codes of conduct are thus “re-garded by their proponents as civilizing in-fluences that temper the hazards of globalmarket forces by giving globalization a hu-man face” (Cutler 2006, p. 200). In attemptingto transmit more stringent regulatory stan-dards from developed countries (i.e., wheremost NGOs are based and where their po-litical impact is concentrated) to the busi-ness operations of western firms in develop-ing countries, NGOs are essentially seekingto privatize the “California effect,” a termcoined to describe the strengthening of na-tional regulations through international trade(Vogel 1995). The underlying objective of

FSC: ForestStewardship Council

these western-based activists is to globalize“embedded liberalism” by developing mecha-nisms of social controls for global firms simi-lar to that described at the national level inPolanyi’s The Great Transformation—a workfrequently cited in the literature on civil reg-ulation (Ruggie 2003).

Yet these claims remain largely theoret-ical for two important reasons. First, thereis little systematic evidence about how mostcivil regulations have actually affected corpo-rate practices and the extent to which theyhave ameliorated the oft-cited shortcomingsof state regulation andr interstate treaties. Al-though some voluntary business codes haveclearly had a discernable impact, their over-all importance as a mechanism of global busi-ness regulation remains unclear. Second, al-though western-based NGOs claim to speakin the name of the underrepresented citizensin developing countries, those citizens remainlargely silent. Thus, the extent to which civilregulations have actually made global businessregulation more democratic remains prob-lematic. The critical question remains: Towhat extent has the growth of civil regulationmade the goverance of multinational firmsand markets more politically accountable?

The support for civil regulation on the partof many NGOs also reflects a change in theirstrategies for interacting with business, as de-scribed by Doh & Teegen (2003), Gereffi et al.(2001), and Rondinelli & London (2003), andanalyzed by King (2007). Many activist groupshave decided that working directly with com-panies to develop and help enforce globalcodes of conduct for them and their suppli-ers constitutes an effective, albeit a second-best, strategy for bringing about substan-tive social and environmental improvementsin developing countries. Although adversarialrelationships between NGOs and firms con-tinue, both informal and formal cooperationbetween global firms and transnational NGOshave measurably increased. There is consid-erable evidence of “a shift [by NGOs] fromboycotts to global partnerships” (Domask2003, p. 157). Such cooperative relationships


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have increased the ability of NGOs toparticipate in and influence corporate deci-sions regarding global labor and environmen-tal practices.

GLOBAL BUSINESSACQUIESCENCE

What about corporations? As Levy & Kaplan(2008) observe, it is surprising how read-ily large, multinational corporations (MNCs)have adopted CSR standards and reportingmechanisms, considering the lack of financialincentives or regulatory coercion. The typicallarge MNC based in the United States andEurope now both has its own code of con-duct and subscribes to one or more voluntaryregulations. It has a dedicated CSR staff andis also likely to issue periodic reports on itssocial and environmental practices, some ofwhich are independently audited.

In some cases, business self-regulation rep-resents a political strategy for avoiding ad-ditional government regulation. For exam-ple, Responsible Care, the chemical industry’scode of conduct, was adopted by several na-tional chemical associations in part to fore-stall national laws establishing more stringentplant safety standards following the chemicalplant explosion at Bhopal, India in 1984. TheInternational Chamber of Commerce’s Busi-ness Charter for Sustainable Developmentwas initiated by global firms who feared thatthe 1992 Rio “Earth Summit” would lead to anexpansion of international environmental reg-ulation. But these examples are exceptional.In most cases, there has been little likelihoodof additional regulation, especially at the in-ternational level or on the part of developingcountries.

The willingness of firms to accept civilregulations is primarily attributable to threeother factors. The first and most impor-tant is pressure from NGOs, who have be-come “highly sophisticated in using market-campaigning technique to gain leverageover recalcitrant firms” (Gereffi et al. 2001,p. 64). Global civil activists have frequently

succeeded in turning the global scope of firmsagainst them, making their global brands andglobal supply networks into a source of po-litical vulnerability (Klein 2000). The past15 years have witnessed a steady series of cre-ative and often well-funded public campaignsthat have sought to “name and shame” highlyvisible firms in North America and Europethrough media exposes, demonstrations, andthreatened or actual boycotts (e.g., Bartley2003, 2005; Bendell 2004; Sasser et al. 2006;O’Rourke 2005). The selection of corporatetargets by activists is determined by corporatereputation, market position, and the proxim-ity of activists to a firm’s headquarters. In addi-tion, activists are more likely to confront theleading global firms in each industry. Somescholars assert that there has been a mea-surable increase in politically oriented con-sumerism (Micheletti et al. 2004). Accordingto Fung (2002, p. 150), “well-ordered socialmarkets supplement conventional channels ofpolitical expression and popular control bycreating distinctive arenas of governance inwhich citizens participate directly, throughtheir market choices, in influencing the be-havior of powerful economic entities often re-sistant to other forms of social control.” Yetthere is little evidence that consumer behav-ior has become more politicized. Most con-sumers continue to make their purchasing de-cisions primarily on the basis of price, quality,and convenience; few activist campaigns haveaffected market shares or corporate profits(Vogel 2005). Nonetheless, many large firmsare highly risk-averse. Anxious to protecttheir reputations and the value of their globalbrands, they have often responded to publicprotests, or even the threat of public protests,by agreeing to change particular policies andpractices and in many cases by publicly sub-scribing to private codes of conduct.

A second factor is linked to changes in cor-porate strategies. In some cases, firms havecome to regard civil regulation, as well asother dimensions of CSR, as consistent withtheir business objectives. The claim that act-ing more “responsibly” by taking into account

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the concerns of nonbusiness “stakeholders” isin the long-term financial interests of businessdominates much popular and business writ-ing on CSR (Vogel 2005). There is consider-able anecdotal evidence to support the busi-ness case for CSR, especially with respect tosome environmental practices. For example,becoming more eco-efficient can reduce busi-ness costs, and there are niche markets forpremium “green” products (Esty & Winston2006). But much writing on CSR exaggeratesthe business benefits of more responsible cor-porate behavior (e.g., Hart 2005). After moreore than 150 statistical studies of the relation-ship between corporate social and financialperformance, a causal relationship betweenthe two has yet to be demonstrated (Margoliset al. 2007). Nevertheless, it is clear that manymanagers do believe—or at least act as if theybelieve—that there are business benefits as-sociated with improving their social and en-vironmental practices and in agreeing to vol-untary regulatory standards.

A third, related explanation for the will-ingness of many firms to adopt standards thatgo beyond legal requirements is that busi-ness norms and values have changed. Theliterature on CSR and civil regulation (e.g.,Dashwood 2004, Haufler 1999) frequentlyclaims that business acceptance of CSR ingeneral and civil regulation in particular bothreflect and reinforce a shift in norms for ac-ceptable global business behavior. Accordingto Ruggie (2004b, p. 21), who helped es-tablish the United Nations Global Compact(a statement of principles that more than 3000firms have endorsed) “the principle is takinghold that transnational firms . . . ought to beheld accountable not only to their sharehold-ers, but also to a broader community of citi-zens who are affected by their decisions andbehavior.” Business acceptance of the princi-ples and practices of civil regulation is thussaid to have a normative, or constructivist,as well as a material and strategic compo-nent. The former component may well exist,but its importance and impact are difficult todocument.

THE DIVERSITY OFVOLUNTARY CODES

Extensive and detailed overviews of thegrowth and diversity of voluntary codes findthat they very widely in their scope, mon-itoring and enforcement, and governance( Jenkins 2001, Utting 2001, Kolk & vanTulder 2005). Nearly all civil regulations areindustry- and/or product-based. They pri-marily address either labor or environmen-tal practices, with a particular focus on high-profile issues such as child labor, sweatshops,forestry practices, diamond mining, and cof-fee and cocoa production. Labor codes areconcentrated in sectors that supply consumergoods, often through highly visible brands,whereas environmental codes have primar-ily emerged in forestry, energy, minerals andmining, chemicals, and, most recently, elec-tronics. A few codes address corporate humanrights practices, primarily in the natural re-sources sector.

The vast majority of voluntary codes havebeen adopted unilaterally by trade associa-tions or individual firms. While often enactedin response to public or political pressures,they do not provide any formal opportuni-ties for nonbusiness constituencies to partic-ipate in their formulation or enforcement,although in some cases NGOs do monitorand report on business compliance with them.Relatively few industry and corporate codesare independently monitored; some containno monitoring provisions at all, and othersare monitored by the firms themselves. Theircontent also varies considerably. Some, suchas the UN Global Compact, establish gen-eral principles or goals, whereas others, suchas ISO 14001, emphasize reporting require-ments or process requirements. Some codescontain relatively specific performance stan-dards, although these vary considerably.

MULTI-STAKEHOLDER CODES

The most important civil regulations aremulti-stakeholder codes, whose quasi-publiccharacter has enabled them to be extensively


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NSMD: non-statemarket-driven

and intensively studied (Utting 2001;Meidinger 2006a; Auld et al. 2007; Bartley2003, 2007a; Conroy 2007). In contrast toindustry self-regulations, which are usuallyunilaterally enacted, multi-stakeholder codes’standards and compliance procedures resultfrom negotiations among businesses, as wellas national governments, NGOs, and/ortrade unions. Described as “one of the mostinnovative and startling institutional designsof the past 50 years,” these transnational codesdirectly involve nonbusiness constituenciesin their governance (Cashore et al. 2004,p. 4). These codes typically incorporate globalproduct and producer certifications as well asprovisions for the independent monitoring ofsuppliers. Non-state market-driven (NSMD)governance systems that recognize and trackthe markets’ supply chain of responsibly pro-duced goods and services have proliferatedin recent years. Their professed objective isto ameliorate a wide range of global socialand environmental market failures, includingfisheries depletion, forest deterioration, andsweatshop labor practices. The growth inthe number of such codes stems from threefactors: the lack of credibility of industryself-regulation, the increase in consumerand NGO influence and activism, and theinfluence of norms of “good governance” thatemphasize the importance of collaborationand partnership.

Bartley (2007a) identifies two theoreticalapproaches to explain how such codes emerge:a market-based approach that views them asa collective action response by businesses tothe “naming and shaming” campaigns wagedby activists and a political approach that ex-amines them as the outcome of broader con-flicts about the power of states, markets, andcivil society in the context of neoliberal glob-alization. His analysis emphasizes the explana-tory power of the latter, stressing the impor-tance of the institutional factors that underliethe political construction of new market in-stitutions. Bartley’s (2005, 2007a,b) researchdescribes the critical role of states, NGOs,social movements, trade unions, and founda-

tions in initiating and supporting new insti-tutions of private transnational governance.Bartley (2005a) explains how and why eachcame to view multi-stakeholder governanceas an appropriate policy response to conflictsover the legitimacy of existing governmentaland international regulations and the factorsthat led firms and particular industrial sectorsto agree to participate in them.

Bernstein & Cashore (2007) address a criti-cal question: How do NSMD governance sys-tems acquire legitimacy or rule-making au-thority? Lacking state authority, they mustcreate incentives for firms to accept their cer-tification requirements or require that theirsuppliers do so. If these standards are toostringent, few suppliers are likely to requestcertification and/or few firms will agree to ac-quire some or all of their purchases from cer-tified suppliers. However, if standards are toolax, they will not be endorsed by NGOs. Inshort, for NSMD systems to work effectively,both firms and NGOs must agree to com-promise; the former must accept more strin-gent standards than they would prefer, whilethe latter must recognize the unwillingness offirms to make costly changes in their businesspractices.

Bernstein & Cashore (2007) argue that thekey to understanding how NSMD governancesystems have emerged lies in recognizing thatbusiness preferences are not static. Over a pe-riod of time, relatively successful NSMD sys-tems have been able to create new identitiesand shared norms. “They are engaged in le-gitimating processes that contain elements oflogics of ‘appropriatness’ and ‘argumentation’in which stakeholders and target actors candiscuss, argue, and deliberate in increasinglylegitimate arenas about NSMD governanceand specific standards” (Bernstein & Cashore2007, p. 368). While both an instrumen-tal “logic of consequences” and a construc-tivist “logic of appropriateness” are almost al-ways at work, the latter becomes progressivelymore important as NSMD systems becomemore institutionalized (Bernstein & Cashore2007, p. 349). Bernstein & Cashore’s research

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describes how both firms and activists grad-ually come to share common expectationsabout appropriate standards for private gov-ernance. The setting in which they inter-act is also dynamic one. Firms learn how towork through NSMD systems to maintainand advance their competitive positions whileNGOs come to accept NSMD governance asa legitimate arena in which to define standardsfor business conduct.

The certification model of NSMD gov-ernance has spread rapidly during the past15 years (Conroy 2007). Beginning withforestry and some elements of organic pro-duction, it has now expanded to factory pro-duction and to agricultural products includingcoffee, cocoa, sugar, and flowers, as well as tofisheries and tourism. In each case, suppliersthat meet specific standards are awarded certi-fications, which then serve to communicate toeither firms or consumers that these productshave been produced responsibly. In principle,social certifications benefit firms that sell toconsumers by improving their reputations andprotecting their markets, and they benefit de-veloping country suppliers by maintaining orincreasing their global market access.

The growth of the certification modelacross multiple sectors has not occurred in-dependently; rather, a few NGOs and foun-dations have played a critical role in spread-ing the idea of certification from one sectorto another, in effect functioning as policy en-trepreneurs (Auld et al. 2007). According toAuld et al., the relative impact of these ini-tiatives across sectors, as well as the particularform that NSMD systems have taken, is linkedto two factors. The first is industrial organiza-tion. NSMD systems are most likely to be ef-fective in sectors that are dominated by large,vertically integrated firms because such firmsare both more vulnerable to public pressuresand more able to afford the additional costs ofcertification. The structure of these systemsis also influenced by the location of supplychains. For example, when the resource be-ing targeted is more diffused and scattered,such as fish stocks, the challenge of establish-

ing an effective NSMD system increases. Inaddition, the public benefits NSMD certifi-cation is likely to provide are most significantwhen the primary producers are in develop-ing countries and the primary consumers arein developed ones, since the latter’s willing-ness to pay more will have a greater marginalimpact.

A second variable is related to public pol-icy. Firms are more likely to accept NSMDcertifications when public regulatory stan-dards are relatively stringent, which meansthat such systems will often first gain supportin regions where they are needed the least.This explains the relative success of the FSC incertifying forests in developed countries andits relatively slow progress in developing ones.An important exception to the latter general-ization is agricultural Fair Trade certification,which has effectively targeted relatively pooragricultural producers in developing coun-tries. However, Fair Trade certification is alsounusual in that Fair Trade certified productsare marketed directly to consumers, some ofwhom are willing to pay a price premium forthem. By contrast, few other certified prod-ucts have identifiable consumer “brands.”

ENVIRONMENTAL CODES

Forestry standards have been the most exten-sively studied civil regulations (e.g., Lipschutz2000, Bostrom 2003, Gulbrandsen 2004,Pattberg 2005, Meidinger 2006b, Auld et al.2007, Sasser 2006). The most comprehen-sive study, Governing Through Markets, an-alyzes the accomplishments and limitationsof one of the most developed civil regula-tions, namely the certification standards forsustainable forestry practices developed bythe FSC (Cashore et al. 2004). This bookseeks to account for the variations in sup-port for the FSC among forestry firms in theUnited States, British Columbia, Germany,the United Kingdom, and Sweden. Althoughfirms in each region/country were initiallyskeptical of the FSC, their subsequent behav-iors diverged significantly. FSC certification


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gained widespread support in both BritishColumbia and the United Kingdom and lim-ited support in both the United States andSweden, with Germany falling in between.Significantly, in each place, forestry firms havean alternative to FSC certification: They canand have often established industry-governedforestry codes.

Governing Through Markets demonstratesthat these variations in the ability of the FSCand its supporters to gain acceptance fromfirms are linked to the position of the coun-try/region in the global economy, the struc-ture of the domestic forestry sector, and thehistory of forestry on the public policy agenda.When a hospitable environment exists, theFSC is able to “convert” forestry companiesand their owners without having to compro-mise its standards, whereas in an inhospitableenvironment, FSC supporters must weakentheir standards in order to attract industrycertification. But in the latter case, competi-tor programs to the FSC have often strength-ened their own regulations as a response topressures for improved forestry practices de-manded along the market’s supply chain. Thusefforts to achieve legitimacy places pressureon both the FSC and its industry competi-tors to alter their rules—both upward anddownward (Cashore et al. 2004). However,this study does not examine the actual impactof either category of voluntary forestry codeson forestry practices.

The experience of the FSC demonstratesnot only the interaction of different kindsof voluntary codes but also the dynamics ofthe relationship between civil regulations andstate policies (Pattberg 2006). Governmentsare an important source of demand for FSCcertified wood and wood products. SeveralEuropean governments, as well some Ameri-can states, either require or give preference toFSC certified products in their procurementdecisions. The government of South Africahas effectively outsourced its forest surveil-lance operations to the FSC, and Denmark hasrecognized the FSC label as an instrument to

assure the legality of timber imports. The ex-perience of the FSC thus illustrates how civilregulations can both affect and be affected bypublic policies.

Although most studies of private forestryregulation focus on their role in developedcountries, Espach (2006) analyzes the accep-tance of FSC standards in two developingcountries, namely Argentina and Brazil. Heexplains the relative effectiveness of the FSCin Brazil and its limited impact in Argentinaby examining the relationship between thedemand for and the supply of global privateforestry certification. The demand for suchprograms depends on the importance of ex-ports to northern markets, the extent to whichnorthern firms and NGOs have an importantdomestic presence, the risks of state regula-tion, and the possibility of a targeted neg-ative campaign by environmental and com-munity NGOs. The supply of such programsis related to the degree of industry concen-tration, the presence of a capable adminis-trative agency, favorable treatment by localregulatory authorities, and the availability ofindependent stakeholder groups capable of in-creasing the legitimacy of program participa-tion. Espach’s analysis complements the workof other scholars in emphasizing the criticalrole of both the domestic and internationaleconomic and political environment in de-termining the legitimacy of civil regulations.However, like Cashore et al. (2004), he doesnot examine how code adoption has actuallyaffected forestry practices.

Moving beyond forestry codes, Prakash& Potoski (2006) posit that voluntary en-vironmental standards such as ISO 14001can be usefully analyzed as clubs. Firms thatchoose to subscribe to such voluntary stan-dards and/or require that their suppliers doso, are often required to bear additional costs.In return, they receive excludable brandingbenefits that enable them to receive credi-ble recognition for their environmental com-mitments by stakeholders (i.e., both environ-mental activists and governments) who value

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the standards that their club membership sig-nifies. However, these benefits are in turnlinked to the stringency of the club’s compli-ance mechanisms. Standards that are weaklyenforced provide firms with fewer “branding”benefits.

What makes ISO 14001 participationcredible, and thus valuable for companies,is that compliance with its standards is in-dependently monitored. This ameliorates animportant shortcoming of many voluntary en-vironmental standards, namely that after for-mally subscribing to them, firms may chooseto “shirk.” According to a study by Lenox &Nash (2003), the effectiveness of environmen-tal industry self-regulation is contingent onthe nature of the monitoring and compliancemechanism brought to bear on noncomplaintfirms although their data is confined to theUnited States.

Potoski & Prakash (2005a,b) report thatfirms certified under ISO 14001 pollute lessthan nonadopters, and that they are also morelikely to better comply with public laws. How-ever, their analysis of the impact of ISO 14001is only based on evidence from the United-States. Their findings are also partially chal-lenged by another study, which finds that al-though adoption of this voluntary regulationdoes appear to reduce the health risks facil-ities impose on communities in the UnitedStates, it does not improve such firms’ regu-latory compliance (Toffel 2004).

According to a study of 108 countries overseven years, ISO 14001 adoption in export-ing countries is positively associated with theextent of ISO adoption by firms in the coun-tries to which they export (Prakash & Potoski2006). Similarly, research on 98 countries oversix years concludes that ISO 14001 adoptionin host countries is related to the extent of for-eign investment by firms from home countriesthat have a high level of ISO 14001 adoption(Prakash & Potoski 2007). An important im-plication of these findings is to challenge theclaim that economic globalization invariablyproduces a “race to the bottom.” Rather, these

results suggest that civil regulation can pro-mote the global “trading up” of regulatorystandards (Vogel 1995). But what is missingfrom these studies of ISO 14001 is any analy-sis of the actual impact of certification on theenvironmental practices of firms in develop-ing countries.

Moreover, as Clapp (1998) notes, the pri-vatization of global environmental gover-nance through codes such as ISO 14001 hasconflicting impacts on developing countries.Many western firms require certification as acondition for doing business with suppliersin developing countries, thus making it a defacto global standard. This means that pro-ducers in developing countries are requiredto bear the often considerable costs of se-curing certification, which may impose a se-rious financial burden and thus effectivelyserve as (private) nontariff trade barriers.Moreover, unlike international environmen-tal agreements, in whose negotiations devel-oping countries are able to participate, devel-oping country producers are not involved inshaping ISO 14001’s standards. More broadly,private regulations may exacerbate rather thanameliorate the imbalance of power in theglobal economy by “privileging the marketover alternative forms of goverance, biasinggoverance toward market mechanisms andgiving corporate choices a disproportionatesay in policy development and implementa-tion at the expense of state representatives andpublic participation” (Bernstein 2005, p. 165).

LABOR CODES

Several studies examine the extensive array oflabor codes that have emerged since the early1990s, describing their origins, their varyingstandards, their mechanisms for promotingcompliance, and the challenges they face inimproving labor conditions (e.g., see Liubicic1998; Diller 1999; Pearson & Seyfang 2001;Bartley 2005, 2007a; Esbenshade 2004).These private regulatory systems are almostas complex as the supply chains they seek


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to monitor. They feature chains of standardsetters, layers of monitoring and enforce-ment, and competing systems of incentives,as well as large variances in the competence,extensiveness, and independence of theirmonitoring practices. Labor codes have cre-ated a wide spectrum of new regulatory pro-cesses, some purely privatized, some collabo-rative, and some socialized (O’Rourke 2003).

While acknowledging the lack of datathat would make it possible to assess how themany diverse private labor codes are actuallyworking, O’Rourke (2003) argues that they allface a number of weaknesses and challenges.Most importantly, the length and breadthof apparel supply chains (often extending tothousands of factories for each western firm),combined with the ability of firms to moveproduction quickly among factories and hidebehind multiple layers of ownership, makesystematic inspections extremely difficult.The brief site visits of inspectors are oftensuperficial and frequently miss less obviousviolations. Fung et al. (2001) suggest thatit would be possible to build upon the coredynamics of nongovernmental regulatorysystems if monitoring methods and their re-sults were more transparent, since this wouldenable the performance of factories and theirmonitors to be systematically compared.However, this goal remains elusive becausevery few western firms make the results oftheir factory monitoring public.

One of those few firms is Nike. An impor-tant study of the impact of Nike’s labor prac-tices finds that, despite significant effort andinvestment by the firm and its staff, the mon-itoring of working conditions in the facto-ries of suppliers has had limited results (Lockeet al. 2006). Several other case studies of theimpact of voluntary labor codes report highlyuneven results ( Jenkins 2001, Hartman et al.2003, Esbenshade 2004, Mamic 2004, Wells2007). There is some evidence of progress inreducing child labor and improving factoryconditions, but less on limiting compulsoryovertime and increasing wages. Meanwhile,

few codes have been effective in assuring therights of workers to bargain collectively.

Liubicic (1998, p. 139) argues that thosewho claim public pressures are capable of pro-moting a “race to the top that will make multi-national corporations a powerful instrumentin the pursuit of human rights” have over-looked serious limits to the effectiveness oflabor codes and labeling schemes. First, thereach of western codes is limited to small en-claves of employees in developing countries;these codes primarily affect workers employedby manufacturers that make branded goodsfor export to the United States and Europe.The focus of most labor codes on sweat-shops effectively excludes the large numbersof workers employed in agriculture, who of-ten work under far worse conditions. Second,the effectiveness of monitoring is constrainedby inadequate funding and by inability tomonitor the informal economy and householdemployment, which are often part of globalsupply chains. Perhaps most critically, the un-willingness of western firms to pay a price pre-mium for more responsibly produced prod-ucts severely constrains both the ability andwillingness of developing country contractorsto comply with corporate and industry laborcodes.

Liubicic (1998) also notes that effectivelyenforced western codes may actually under-mine the welfare of developing country work-ers. For example, under consumer and ac-tivist pressures, a firm may abandon the useof child labor in countries where such labor iscritical to family incomes. To the extent thatvoluntary labor codes replace rather thancomplement state regulations, developingcountry governments are essentially cedingtheir sovereignty to the demands of westernactivists, who are the primary drivers and themain “consumers” of labor codes. Many laborcodes essentially empower NGOs, rather thandeveloping country workers, and the two’s pri-orities can often conflict. The long-term ef-fectiveness of private labor codes may welllie in public recognition of their limitations,

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leading them to be replaced or complementedby more effective national and internationalpublic regulations, a conclusion echoed byDiller (1999).

SHORTCOMINGS OFCODE RESEARCH

The above review does not exhaust re-search on specific voluntary codes. Therehave been studies of the UN Global Com-pact (Therien & Pouliot 2006), human rightscodes (Watts 2005), Fair Trade International(Courville 2005), the Marine StewardshipCouncil (Constance & Bonanno 2000), andcodes for coffee production (Giovannucci &Ponte 2005), as well as several studies of Re-sponsible Care (Gunningham 1995, King &Lenox 2000, Garcia-Johnson 2000, Howardet al. 2000). However, this entire body of lit-erature has two significant weaknesses. First,relatively few civil regulations have been stud-ied in depth; indeed, more research has beenpublished on the FSC and forestry codes thanon all other codes combined. This means thatwe know relatively little about the vast ma-jority of civil regulations, how and why theywere established, and how and how well theyare working. It is as if scholars tried to un-derstand the significance of government reg-ulation by studying a small sample of existinglaws and rules.

Second, too few studies examine theglobal impact of civil regulations. Virtuallyall quantitative studies of the impact of bothISO 14001 and Responsible Care focus ondeveloped countries, most commonly theUnited States. In the case of the FSC, we knowmore about its origin, standards, governance,and patterns of firm adoption in developedcountries than we do about how the spreadof certification has actually affected the con-ditions of forests in either developed or de-veloping countries. Although there have beenseveral studies of the impact of labor codes,they are primarily based on case studies, whichare not necessarily representative. There arefew scholarly studies of the effectiveness of

most civil regulations. These two major gapsmake it difficult to assess the overall impactof civil regulations on either business behav-ior or the conditions they were established toameliorate.

OUTLINING ARESEARCH AGENDA

The growth of civil regulation poses impor-tant questions that could usefully engage po-litical scientists, especially those working inthe subfields of international politics, com-parative politics, public law, and governmentregulation.

One key research question has to do withthe relationship between civil regulation andpublic or state regulation. Civil regulationsand state policies can interact in many ways.Private regulatory standards can function toavoid additional state regulations, to comple-ment or better enforce state regulations, as aprecursor to more stringent state regulations,or as a substitute for state regulations. Underwhat conditions and how frequently has eachoutcome occurred? This issue is particularlycritical with respect to the governments ofdeveloping countries, as their failures to ad-equately regulate domestic firms are the rea-son why much global civil regulation exists inthe first place. But it is also important to ex-plore at the international level, where manyof the regulatory failures that have promptedcivil regulation have also occurred. It is alsorelevant to understanding the limited effortsof developed countries to adopt legally bind-ing regulations for global firms based in theircountries.

Governments engage with civil regula-tions in various ways. Some western govern-ments, primarily in Europe, have helped toinitiate and finance civil regulations, and havesought to promote compliance with themby mandating corporate social and environ-mental reporting and by requiring or en-couraging “ethical” investment policies bypublic sector funds (Aaronson & Reeves2002, Habisch et al. 2005). For their part,


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some developing country governments regardwestern-based civil regulations as a vehicleto improve domestic regulatory enforcement,whereas others view them as an intrusionon their sovereignty. Some developing gov-ernments expect civil regulations to improvetheir global competitiveness, whereas oth-ers perceive them as threatening their ac-cess to global markets by raising domesticproduction costs in order to satisfy westernactivists. Students of public policy and com-parative politics could contribute to the lit-erature on civil regulation by exploring thevarying responses of governments to themand by explaining how they interact withother regulatory policies and developmentstrategies.

Another critical issue has to do with thepolitical accountability and democratic natureof civil regulations. Advocates of civil regu-lations claim that, by providing nonbusinessconstituencies with new political and marketmechanisms to affect business decisions, theseregulations can help address the democraticdeficit in global corporate governance. Butvirtually all these nonbusiness constituenciesare located in developed countries. Too muchattention has focused on the extent to whichcivil regulations are or are not dominated byglobal firms and not enough on the lack ofrepresentation from political constituencies indeveloping countries—including local firms.We also need to better understand how civilregulations affect the interests and influenceof nonstate actors in developing countries, in-cluding their impact on the strenghtening ofcivil society.

We know much more about what codes re-quire and why firms have subscribed to themthan we do about the extent of actual busi-ness compliance. Scholars need to apply to thestudy of nonstate regulations the sophisticatedtools they have developed to measure andexplain corporate compliance with govern-ment regulations. We need to get inside the“black box” of firms to better understand howcivil regulations have changed their behaviors.How do both global firms and their develop-

ing country suppliers determine what finan-cial and organizational resources to allocate tocomplying with them? How do they balancethe costs of acting more “responsibly” with thebusiness risks of not doing so? In what wayshas the often-cited change in business valuesand norms actually affected the decisions ofglobal firms, such as where to outsource andinvest and whether to pay a premium for moreresponsibly produced products? How doescompliance with civil regulations interact withglobal competitive pressures to reduce costs?Studies of corporate political strategies needto incorporate an analysis of how firms en-gage in nonstate market-based politics andalso to explore the relationship between busi-ness adoption of voluntary standards and theirefforts to influence public policies.

This in turn raises another important ques-tion: How effective have civil regulations beenin achieving their professed public interestobjectives? The answer clearly varies acrossdifferent kinds of regulations, issues, and in-dustries. Some civil regulations have beenmuch more effective than others. Too manyassessments of the actual and potential im-pact of civil regulations—both positive andnegative—assume that it is all of a piece, whenin fact the impact of civil regulations is bothhighly uneven and still evolving. Moreover,it is critical to assess not only the current ef-fectiveness but also the relative effectivenessof civil regulations. Their impact should becompared not to an ideal world of effectivecommand-and-control regulations in devel-oped countries but to real-world alternatives.More specifically, how do their strengths andweaknesses compare to international environ-mental, labor, and human rights treaties, manyof which also rely on soft law, as well as to thedomestic regulations of developing countries,many of which are poorly enforced? What fac-tors are likely to affect their future legitimacy,scope, and impact—and what are their struc-tural limitations?

Existing research on private global busi-ness regulation raises but does not answer thecritical question: What mix of domestic and

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international, private and public, and hard andsoft law would enable global firms and mar-kets to be better governed? This is a serioussubject that deserves more serious scholarlyanalysis than it has received.

Research on global civil regulations bypolitical scientists must be interdisciplinary.Although this survey has emphasized studiesof civil regulation by political scientists andresearch published in political science jour-

nals, most work on this topic has been writtenby scholars and others outside the disciplineand appears in both academic and nonaca-demic publications that are unfamiliar to mostpolitical scientists. Drawing on this research,contributing to it, and integrating its findingsinto our discipline would significantly advanceour understanding of a relatively new and stillevolving dimension of international businessregulation.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity ofthis review.

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