Can Transnational Business Regulation lead to “Good Governance”? Towards an Analytical Framework for Assessing Governance Challenges in Developing Countries taking Timber Legality Verification in Southeast Asia as Example

TY - ABST

T1 - Can Transnational Business Regulation lead to “Good Governance”?

T2 - International Workshops on Public Policy

AU - Nathan, Iben

AU - Cashore, Benjamin

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - A range of scholars have endeavored to assess, conceptualize, and understand what is the role of transnational efforts in contributing to and providing innovative governance solutions for the world’s most pressing problems such as deforestation and forest degradation, and other issues for which there exist perceived “governance gaps.” The aim has been to assess how transnational interventions in the form of regulation and/or service provision may work within nation-states. Much attention has centered on whether transnational and non-state governance might provide synergistic solutions, create compliance, efficiencies, legitimacy, and/or challenge existing unequal power relationships. Especially for “areas of limited statehood,” scholars have proposed two profound questions: Can transnational interventions substitute, complement, or improve the capacity of States? And what are the most promising cases of transnational public or private authority for enhancing governance in developing countries? This paper focuses on one of the most recent and innovative examples of Transnational Business Regulation (TBR), i.e. Timber Legality Verification (LV). The main aim of LV is to combat illegal logging and related international trade, which play major roles in ongoing tropical deforestation and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Our conceptual and theoretical point of departure is that students of LV have done well in disentangling international influences and identifying a range of interaction across multiple levels of governance in developing countries. However, much work remains to better conceptualize, and assess, the causal effects of different types of transnational governance on the one hand, with a clear and specific “dependent” variable on the other hand, i.e. the types of governance challenges and policies that are the ultimate targets of influence. Our general argument is that sweeping generalizations about the influence of TBR rarely hold up to scrutiny because they, on the one hand, conflate incredible different “independent variables”, such as “non-state market driven” (NSMD) certification, corporate social responsibility efforts, industry self-regulation efforts, and the recent LV initiative. On the other hand, they rarely distinguish between different “dependent variables” such as the precise governance and substantive challenges each of these different intervention types have been posited to have influenced in developing countries. Potentially meaningful implications that might be generated to improve “good” governance “on the ground” are therefore left uncovered. Or worse, conflation has led to recommendations that hold little promise and/or were created to maintain, rather than alter, status quo power dynamics. Hence, efforts to understand the effects of TBR in developing countries must expand from assuming support will foster improved governance to theorizing, and measuring, three potential effects on domestic governance: improve, have no influence, exacerbate. This paper aims at theorizing and conceptualizing these effects in drawing on examples from Southeast Asia as a way to justify, and position, future empirical research. To gain analytical traction, we draw on a range of existing research exploring the domestic influence of LV in “areas of limited statehood,” and then focus especially on domestic governance challenges in Southeast Asia.

AB - A range of scholars have endeavored to assess, conceptualize, and understand what is the role of transnational efforts in contributing to and providing innovative governance solutions for the world’s most pressing problems such as deforestation and forest degradation, and other issues for which there exist perceived “governance gaps.” The aim has been to assess how transnational interventions in the form of regulation and/or service provision may work within nation-states. Much attention has centered on whether transnational and non-state governance might provide synergistic solutions, create compliance, efficiencies, legitimacy, and/or challenge existing unequal power relationships. Especially for “areas of limited statehood,” scholars have proposed two profound questions: Can transnational interventions substitute, complement, or improve the capacity of States? And what are the most promising cases of transnational public or private authority for enhancing governance in developing countries? This paper focuses on one of the most recent and innovative examples of Transnational Business Regulation (TBR), i.e. Timber Legality Verification (LV). The main aim of LV is to combat illegal logging and related international trade, which play major roles in ongoing tropical deforestation and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Our conceptual and theoretical point of departure is that students of LV have done well in disentangling international influences and identifying a range of interaction across multiple levels of governance in developing countries. However, much work remains to better conceptualize, and assess, the causal effects of different types of transnational governance on the one hand, with a clear and specific “dependent” variable on the other hand, i.e. the types of governance challenges and policies that are the ultimate targets of influence. Our general argument is that sweeping generalizations about the influence of TBR rarely hold up to scrutiny because they, on the one hand, conflate incredible different “independent variables”, such as “non-state market driven” (NSMD) certification, corporate social responsibility efforts, industry self-regulation efforts, and the recent LV initiative. On the other hand, they rarely distinguish between different “dependent variables” such as the precise governance and substantive challenges each of these different intervention types have been posited to have influenced in developing countries. Potentially meaningful implications that might be generated to improve “good” governance “on the ground” are therefore left uncovered. Or worse, conflation has led to recommendations that hold little promise and/or were created to maintain, rather than alter, status quo power dynamics. Hence, efforts to understand the effects of TBR in developing countries must expand from assuming support will foster improved governance to theorizing, and measuring, three potential effects on domestic governance: improve, have no influence, exacerbate. This paper aims at theorizing and conceptualizing these effects in drawing on examples from Southeast Asia as a way to justify, and position, future empirical research. To gain analytical traction, we draw on a range of existing research exploring the domestic influence of LV in “areas of limited statehood,” and then focus especially on domestic governance challenges in Southeast Asia.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

Y2 - 26 June 2018 through 28 June 2018

ER -