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Transnational corporations have become key players in many areas of global governance, including global agrifood governance. One element of their influence on global rules and norms and the associated allocation of goods and values are private governance schemes. Private governance - especially TNC dominated private governance, which is the focus of this paper -, however, has received ambivalent evaluations in politics and science. Opinions on its potential contribution to the pursuit of sustainable development diverge widely. A real understanding of the potential contribution of private governance to the pursuit of sustainable development requires an inquiry into the conditions, under which TNCs are likely to design and implement effective - in terms of the creation of public goods - rather than rhetorical private governance schemes. The present paper, therefore, attempts to identify the determinants of the willingness of TNCs to design such effective private governance institutions for the case of agrifood governance. In our effort to assess the determinants of effective TNC engagement in private agrifood governance, we define effectiveness in terms of the stringency of private food standards. We argue that this effectiveness will be a function of external pressure, internal collaborative structures, the characteristics of available solutions as well as the size and heterogeneity of the group of actors designing and implementing the given private governance institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent energy crisis has sparked renewed interest in alternative sources of energy. Nuclear power, in particular, is at the top of the policy-agenda in several countries across the globe as the most viable energy option in the long-run. At the EU leve ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of private food governance for democratic legitimacy. In the modern (western) traditions, democratic legitimacy has come to rely on two pillars, one based on input-oriented arguments (government by the people) and one based on output-oriented arguments (government for the people). As private governance institutions lack the legitimacy arising from democratic election procedures, their claims to legitimacy tend to be based on output-oriented arguments. This paper argues that justifications of legitimacy based on output legitimacy are insufficient, since assessments of effectiveness depend on the assessor's perspective on an institution's appropriate objectives. In consequence, questions of participation and representation re-emerge. Therefore, the paper assesses whether deliberative democracy perspectives provide a more promising source of legitimacy for private governance institutions. In this context, the paper also explores possible linkages between democratic deliberations and effectiveness. The paper illustrates its argument in three cases of private food governance, namely, private retail standards, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives for GMOs, and the Marine Stewardship Council.. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of development are often confronted with ethical dilemmas. Economic growth promises to alleviate poverty, improve health and welfare, as well as create employment and improved working conditions. Yet, policies supporting economic growth often result in environmental degradation, human rights deterioration and social welfare decline, in particular in developing countries, but also carry adverse consequences for the more vulnerable segments of the population in developed countries. Theorising about such dilemmas and designing policies aiming to confront them, is implicitly or explicitly based on an understanding of ethics. In western traditions, for example, such an understanding is based on what guarantees individual fortification and promotes social welfare. Critics argue that based on such an understanding, approaches to development lack an ontological criticism for a different meaning of human existence, besides the logic of individual emancipation and the “materialistic” satisfaction of human longing for liberty. This paper explores alternative visions of human development and tries to identify how these are expressed, represented and promoted by the relevant actors in the global development governance. The paper also discusses the political feasibility of alternative visions to human development, as well as the conditions that would encourage their feasibility if these were desirable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the food sector, retailers often present themselves as guardians of consumer interests, with superior efficiency and effectiveness in the governance of food, in relation to public actors. Concerns about retail governance institutions, such as private standards or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), mainly emphasise a lack of input legitimacy, that is legitimacy relying on democratic procedures. Less often concerns are raised regarding output legitimacy, that is legitimacy based on the effectiveness of retail governance institutions. Based on concepts of discursive power, this paper then explores how retail corporations establish their claim to legitimacy in food governance via concepts of output legitimacy. In pursuing its aim the paper performs a discourse analysis of retailers’ discursive strategies and draws inferences about linkages between democracy and power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political and scholarly debates on sustainable development frequently highlight the importance of transparency in achieving sustainability objectives. Food crises like BSE, the Food and Mouth Disease, or the Chicken Pest have made demands for more transparency in the complex and highly industrialized food chains a mainstay in the discussion. National governments as well as supranational organizations have introduced corresponding policy initiatives. While transparency is an intuitively desirable norm, actually designing and implementing policies that will provide transparency is a complex and highly political task, however. The present paper delineates relevant developments in pursuit of transparency in the food chain in the Netherlands and the European Union. Based on stakeholder interviews, it identifies existing obstacles to a successful transformation of the norm of transparency into appropriate political frameworks and governance mechanisms as well as potential steps for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper delineates the facets of the increasing political and economic power of retail corporations and investigates their implications for sustainability. It highlights that these implications are ambivalent. On the one side, increasing retail power can be linked to some improvements in food quality. However, these improvements tend not to go as far as retailers suggest and as consumers expect them to go. At the same time, there is a potential of significant detrimental effects of increasing retail power on the social characteristics of the global food system. Accordingly, the paper argues for stringent political regulation of retail power in the food sector and explores the potential for initiatives to make social aspects an inherent part of sustainability criteria. The paper pursues its objectives by employing a critical approach to global governance in the food system, highlighting in particular the structural and discursive facets of increasing retail power. Moreover, it pays particular attention to the nature and implications of private standards developed by retailers and their organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's agrifood governance is shaped to a substantial extent by private actors. Retail corporations in particular have assumed a leading role in global agrifood governance. Due to highly oligopolistic market structures, food standards developed by retailers set rules of access and exclusion in the global agrifood system. Our paper aims to show that these standards have an enormous economic, social and political impact on societies around the world. Therefore, they deserve to be an object in research and teaching in international studies. Moreover, insights on the origins and consequences of retail food governance speak to the role of private governance in general and retail governance in particular in other sectors of the global political economy. Our analysis of the causes and consequences of retail food governance highlights the extent to which and reasons why private actors have acquired both the power and the authority to govern. Our analysis of the consequences of retail food governance, in turn, delineates that these consequences reach from fundamental social conditions, such as sustainable farmer livelihoods and consumer lifestyles, to the major environmental challenges faced by the global population today, specifically climate change and the spread of genetically modified organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]