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The politics of meta-governance in transnational private sustainability governance

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  • Luc Fransen

Abstract

In order to address challenges resulting from interactions between transnational private sustainability standard organizations, initiatives emerge that meta-govern these standards. Contrary to prevailing understandings in public policy literature, such meta-governance initiatives are mostly run by nongovernmental rather than governmental actors. While literature presents the sustainability standards field as predominantly governed by one meta-governor, ISEAL, it is hardly recognized that, alongside ISEAL, rival meta-governance initiatives are proliferating. These initiatives occur in similar sectors and issue fields, use quite similar modes of meta-governance and interact with each other. This paper explains the multiple emergence of meta-governance in the governance of sustainability standards in agriculture. It shows how meta-governance efforts are developed by political coalitions of nongovernmental actors with divergent views on and priorities in making production more sustainable. It therefore reveals the mechanism through which meta-governance of coordination problems among cross-border self-organizing governance arrangements may end up reproducing these coordination problems, rather than addressing them. Copyright The Author(s) 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Luc Fransen, 2015. "The politics of meta-governance in transnational private sustainability governance," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 48(3), pages 293-317, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:policy:v:48:y:2015:i:3:p:293-317
    DOI: 10.1007/s11077-015-9219-8
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