I. INTRODUCTION: EXPORTATION AND IMPORTATION OF NORMS
The construction of norms, institutions and practices has become increasingly complex, diversified and pluralistic. The area of food safety is not an exception. Food safety has traditionally been a governmental or intergovernmental matter. It has been the subject of national regulations and international Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) standards, both of which are addressed by the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS Agreement). However, in addition to governmental and intergovernmental regulations, various private standards are emerging and proliferating in the field of agro-food trade. While such private standards are voluntary and are not enforced by governments, they nonetheless exert a strong influence over agro-food exports.
This article addresses the transformation of global governance in agro-food trade caused by the proliferation of private standards. Private standards are diverse in terms of their origin and in the kinds of issues that they address.Footnote 1 Among the numerous food safety standards on the rise, this article focuses on those relating to ‘good agricultural practices (GAP)’. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defined the concept of GAP in 2003 as ‘practices that address environmental, economic and social sustainability for on-farm processes, and result in safe and quality food and non-food agricultural products’.Footnote 2 Thus, GAP standards generally cover the production of safe, sufficient, and high-quality food on farms, as well as environmental protection and the welfare of farm workers. Among the various GAP initiatives, this article focuses its analysis on GLOBALG.A.P.—originally started in 1997 by retailers belonging to the Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group, GLOBALG.A.P. has been applied widely in Europe and has also expanded beyond Europe.Footnote 3
Research on GLOBALG.A.P. is not new. Existing literature on GLOBALG.A.P. has primarily focused on its trade impact—whether and how GLOBALG.A.P. standards function as trade barriers to agro-food exports from Africa and Latin America to the EU.Footnote 4 Such concern over GLOBALG.A.P. has been also addressed under the WTO's SPS Agreement.Footnote 5 The concerns were first raised at a 2005 meeting of the SPS Committee, a forum in which all WTO Member States participate.Footnote 6 At the meeting, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, supported by Jamaica, expressed a concern that GLOBALG.A.P. standards (named EurepGAP at that time) had become trade conditions for their banana exports to the UK. They argued that GLOBALG.A.P. standards are ‘not mandatory’ but are becoming de facto requirements to enter the UK market.Footnote 7
The effects of GLOBALG.A.P. are not limited to its trade impacts, however. This article focuses on the regulatory impacts that GLOBALG.A.P., a single private standard started in Europe, has on global food safety governance: how GLOBALG.A.P., through norm diffusion,Footnote 8 affects other private standard initiatives and triggers regulatory change in the receiving States.
Legal scholars have long studied the reception of foreign norms and transformation of domestic settings, usually, in the contexts of international treaties or the migration of national rules. At the same time, there is an extensive body of literature in non-legal spheres (eg political science or international relations), which has also addressed norm or policy diffusion. The theory of diffusion in political science has been developed in several contexts, such as how EU laws and institutional models influence (potential and new) Member States of the EU,Footnote 9 or how the policy of democracy and economic liberalization proliferate worldwide.Footnote 10 This article mainly draws from theories found in the legal literature on norm diffusion and reception; this article does not aim to contribute to the broader literature on diffusion by integrating non-legal and legal disciplines. Nevertheless, the article does selectively refer to work from political science and international relations when these can provide important insights.
The rest of this article proceeds as follows. Section II reviews the existing legal literature that helps us understand private norm diffusion and reception. This section offers a theoretical framework for the article and takes up three relevant bodies of legal literature. The first is concerned with ‘law's migration’,Footnote 11 ‘transnational legal ordering’Footnote 12 or ‘legal transplants’.Footnote 13 This literature assists in examining the effects, changes and transformation that occur in receiving States.
The second literature in Section II is concerned with a specific mechanism of regulatory diffusion called the ‘market-based approach’ or ‘market-driven governance system’.Footnote 14 There are various processes of global regulatory changes, but the ‘market-based approach’ focuses particularly on market forces that can bring about regulatory change and transformation in receiving States.
The third body of literature is on ‘transnational private regulation’.Footnote 15 This article analyses how norm diffusion is derived from private actors, so work on ‘transnational private regulation’ is the closest to this article's research subject. The early legal literature on transnational governance focused on the governance system beyond nation states, including governance through private regimes.Footnote 16 Currently, the literature addresses how the emergence of private regulation/regimes transforms (national and global) regulatory governance systems, with insights of legitimacy or effectiveness of regulation.
These three literatures in Section II highlight four factors that should be considered when analysing norm diffusion. Next, Sections III and IV study the case of GLOBALG.A.P. and its proliferation outside of Europe. These two sections consider to what extent case findings support the analysis in Section II. First, Section III looks at GLOBALG.A.P. as an exporter of norms, analysing its efforts to reach beyond Europe via the benchmarking process. Then, Section IV examines the importers of norms by studying emerging local GAP initiatives, mainly in Japan. In addition, this section briefly introduces local GAP initiatives in Thailand and the US in comparison to that of Japan. These three countries—Japan, Thailand and the US—were chosen because research on GAP in these countries was scarce compared with that concerning countries in Africa and Latin America.Footnote 17 Also, the three countries had varied responses to the arrival of the GLOBALG.A.P. standards, which allows for an analysis of several possible processes for GAP norm diffusion.
In both legal and non-legal literature on diffusion, it has been pointed out that more empirical research on private regulation is needed.Footnote 18 In this vein, this article contributes to the need for empirical workFootnote 19 by examining the regulatory impacts of GLOBALG.A.P.—how its ideas proliferate and influence non-European countries. Sections III and IV utilize interviews conducted by the author with relevant actors in 2011 and 2012.Footnote 20 In some cases, interview information was confirmed and updated by later emails. The analysis and arguments in this article are supplemented by insights gained from the interviews, which uncovered the realities of private norm diffusion. The final Section concludes.
II. THREE RELEVANT BODIES OF LITERATURE ON PRIVATE NORM DIFFUSION
A. The Migration of Law and Its Various Effects in Receiving States
As suggested previously, the literature on ‘law's migration’,Footnote 21 ‘transnational legal ordering’Footnote 22 or ‘legal transplants’Footnote 23 provides important insights for this article's research, namely in examining the effects, impacts and innovation that occur in receiving States. While this article focuses on non-State, private norms or standards, the focus in the literature has been on international treaties or foreign national rules (eg international human rights laws, education policies or basic national codes) migrating into receiving States. Nevertheless, the literature offers important insights for private norm diffusion.
Led by Gregory Shaffer, work on ‘transnational legal ordering’Footnote 24 identifies five types of changes in receiving States: change in substantive law and practice; change in the boundary of the state, the market and other forms of social ordering; change in the institutional architecture of the state; changes in the role of professional expertise in governance; and change in accountability mechanisms.Footnote 25 One important lesson drawn from above is that the influences and consequences of importing foreign (or international) norms are diverse: external norms entering a country may produce myriad consequences.
At the same time, there has been a cautionary note concerning the transformative effects brought by foreign norms. The literature on ‘legal transplants’ argues that the effects of norm diffusion may generate undesirable consequences, such as ‘the mismatch between preexisting conditions and institutions and transplanted law, which weakens the effectiveness of the imported legal order’.Footnote 26 Such a mismatch occurs because ‘the social, economic and institutional context often differs remarkably between origin and transplant country’.Footnote 27 The concern may apply to the importation of foreign private norm (in this article, GLOBALG.A.P.) as well as that of foreign State laws.
Existing literature also helps us realize that the norms can affect various dimensions of national law, policy and institution in various non-binding forms, and that the ideas and aspirations of the norms reach down to the local community level. The work of Judith Resnik on ‘law's migration’ finds various local actions and initiatives that occurred in opposition to the US's refusal to ratify international treaties such as the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Kyoto Protocol concerning climate change.Footnote 28 Even without US ratifications, there have been many innovative initiatives supporting and implementing the purposes of the international treaties at local state and city levels. Such actions have also been assisted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).Footnote 29 An important lesson drawn from this is that just as international and foreign national laws affect parties at different levels (eg local governments, cities and NGOs), foreign private norms influence not only the private sector, but the public sector as well. Such public and private interactions in the context of private norm diffusion will be further discussed below in subsection C.1.
B. Market-Driven Regulatory Mechanism
Global regulatory change has traditionally—and is still primarily—carried out by making international agreements among States. However, a mechanism of market-driven regulatory diffusion has recently received much attention from scholars.Footnote 30 It is sometimes referred to as ‘unilateral regulatory globalization’Footnote 31 or ‘unilateral regulatory initiatives or extensions’,Footnote 32 where ‘a single state is able to externalize its laws and regulations outside its borders through market mechanisms’.Footnote 33 One recent interesting example is norm transfer in the transatlantic context—the remarkable impact of EU legislation on US policies and laws, based on the power of the EU's large market size.Footnote 34 This is also labelled as ‘the Brussels effect’.Footnote 35
One reason for scholars paying close attention to market-driven regulatory mechanisms is the long debate over whether market forces cause a ‘regulatory race to the bottom’ or a ‘race to the top’. Under the notion of the ‘regulatory race to the bottom’, it has been argued that governments lower standards in order to reduce the production costs of their national producers, thereby making their exports more competitive. However, David Vogel's Trading Up demonstrates that economic globalization and market forces do not necessarily result in lowering standards.Footnote 36 Sometimes, it leads to a ‘race to the top’: exporting countries adopt stricter standards in line with those in importing countries out of the fear of losing market access. Such potential virtuous effects of the market—the market's ability to make changes and improve standards worldwide—have attracted scholars’ attention.
The phenomenon of unilateral regulatory initiatives based on market forces is not necessarily limited to the exportation and importation of EU laws. This article argues that a similar process of private norm extension also occurs through market mechanisms—foreign private standards, which are not legally enforceable, can also diffuse and enter different countries (and regions). Such a phenomenon is referred to as a ‘non-State market-driven mechanism’.Footnote 37 By way of illustration, GLOBALG.A.P. has proliferated, because GAP schemes outside Europe have a strong incentive to adopt standards similar to those of GLOBALG.A.P. in order to access the EU market. Such an incentive works due to the globalization of supply chains and the correspondent increase in the responsibilities imposed on producers. Market pressures such as ‘the promise of price premiums, market access, or prevention of negative boycott campaigns’Footnote 38 create ‘incentives to producers of the product to comply with the standards’.Footnote 39
While the role of market forces is one significant factor in promoting global regulatory diffusion, a number of commentators recognize that this is not the only factor.Footnote 40 There are two commonly stated conditions that supplement the role of market power, contributing to regulatory change. First, some studies argue that successful norm diffusion depends on the relative costs of regulatory adjustment.Footnote 41 Regulatory change incurs costs both in departing from the status quo and in complying with a new norm.Footnote 42 In the case of an arrival of foreign national laws, a foreign law would be adopted more smoothly if it ‘resonate[d] well with domestic rules, traditions, and practices’ in the receiving State.Footnote 43 In other words, the costs would increase if the new norm diverged too much from existing practices on the receiving side.
Secondly, the existing studies have also found that the support of citizens, firms and non-governmental actors is important for regulatory change to occur on the receiving side. In the recent transatlantic context—the relatively higher environmental and safety standards in the EU compared to those in the US—it has been pointed out that there have been strong pressures from the consumer and environmental activists in the EU to adopt stricter standards, while non-governmental actors have in general been weak in pressurizing the US federal government to enact legislation that conflicts with business interests.Footnote 44 Nevertheless, there have been a few cases where EU laws were successfully adopted in the US because of non-governmental actors or advocacy groups.Footnote 45 In particular, the work of Joanne Scott on the influence of the EU's REACH regulationFootnote 46 over the US regulatory environment shows that non-governmental actors at the state level (instead of the federal level) played an important role in bringing the ideas contained in the EU regulation into state-level policy reform.Footnote 47
The fact that these two factors occur in receiving States indicates that while norm/standard diffusion is initiated and promoted by norms/standard exporters using market pressures, whether or not the diffusion succeeds also depends on domestic conditions and reactions on the receiving side.
C. Transnational Private Regulation
The third body of literature is on ‘transnational private regulation’ and conducts a conceptual analysis of private regulation and regimes instead of dealing with foreign national laws or European laws as research subjects. In this sense, the literature presented here shares this article's research interests. The literature is also linked to ‘civil regulation’ or ‘privatization of regulation’ as discussed in political science, where private regulation is characterized as a new mode of governance that fills a gap left by government and international organizations.
Led by Colin Scott, Fabrizio Cafaggi and Linda Senden,Footnote 48 the literature on transnational private regulation explains its scope as follows:
The concept of transnational private regulation emerged, it has been claimed, to capture the idea of governance regimes which take the form of ‘coalitions of nonstate actors which codify, monitor, and in some cases certify firms’ compliance with labor, environmental, human rights, or other standards of accountability’.Footnote 49
This concept of ‘transnational private regulation’ includes GLOBALG.A.P. However, studies of transnational private regulation do not necessarily focus on norm diffusion. Rather, the literature is concerned with broader issues, such as the emergence of private regulation and regimes and their impact on governance systems. Nonetheless, the literature helps us take into account two important factors that successfully promote norm diffusion: public and private interactions; and the ‘legitimacy’ of private standards.
1. Public and private interactions
This article investigates how GLOBALG.A.P., a private standard started in Europe, affects other private standard initiatives in the world. However, the rise of private standards does not necessarily mean that government-driven actions or policies are unimportant. GLOBALG.A.P. may influence not only local private schemes in other countries, but government-driven GAP schemes as well. One research interest in the literature on transnational private regulation is the interactions between public and private regimes.Footnote 50
In some cases, public regulation preceded private regulation; in some cases it was the other way around. One hypothesis is that some interactions between public and private schemes may successfully promote the proliferation of the norm in receiving States. In this vein, it is important to ascertain whether the relation between governmental and private schemes is competitive or complementary. On the one hand, if a private scheme competes against a government-drive scheme, the competition may actually encourage the proliferation of the private effort. On the other hand, the development of governmental and private schemes may be mutually reinforcing. It has been suggested that ‘in an area where regulatory protection is frequently demand driven [as in the agro-food sector], the relationship between the regulator and the private sector may be less than antagonistic’.Footnote 51 Intentionally or not, governments may let a private scheme pursue stricter standards than governmental regulation. Also, the coexistence of governmental and private schemes may generate complementary effects, thereby producing a somewhat positive understanding of ideas presented by the two schemes in receiving States: ‘[T]he relationship between the public and voluntary private standard systems is still evolving, with the former appearing to be ceding some ground to the latter but without this necessarily leading to an inferior outcome for society as a whole.’Footnote 52 This may be seen as one type of ‘institutional complementarity approach’, where the existence of a related public scheme provides a foundation for ‘private regulation to operate effectively and credibly’.Footnote 53
2. ‘Legitimacy’ of private standards
The legitimacy of private regulation has been increasingly debated in existing literature on private regulation/regimes. Scholars point out the fact that many private regulatory regimes lack mechanisms that are involved when public laws are established and implemented, such as legislature or judicial review.Footnote 54 Thus, private regulation, which is driven by the special interests of a handful of initiators, may not necessarily serve broader public purposes. It has been argued that ‘[r]egulatory institutions that supply participatory mechanisms that are fair, transparent, accessible, and open … are more likely to produce common interest regulation’.Footnote 55 Here, the argument highlights the need for private regulation to embrace constitutional elements, such as participation, transparency and openness.
While the debate over private regulatory governance has increasingly demanded public purposes and constitutional mechanisms, it is still unclear why private regulation is required to serve broader public purposes in the first place. Why can private regulations not remain ‘purely private goods’Footnote 56 or ‘pure capture regulation’ (in contrast to ‘common interest regulation’)Footnote 57 by pursuing special and narrow interests? There are two reasons arguing against this.
First, there are growing concerns over the impacts of private regulation: ‘Private rules in the form of standards have far reaching consequences affecting a wide range of actors, such as consumers and suppliers across the globe.’Footnote 58 Indeed, a number of studies have recognized trade impacts of GLOBALG.A.P. on smallholders in developing countries.Footnote 59 Because of such broad impacts of private standards, there have been gradual demands for greater legitimacy in private governance.
Second, legitimacy will better secure ‘regulatory compliance’ with private regulation.Footnote 60 It has been argued that ‘[i]n private global governance regimes, … legitimacy … is a crucial element in the effectiveness of a norm and in the level of compliance with that norm’.Footnote 61 Similarly, it has been suggested that ‘legitimacy takes on added importance because, by definition, nonstate governance schemes lack the traditional enforcement capacities associated with the sovereign state’.Footnote 62 These arguments imply that constitutional mechanisms to achieve legitimacy and accountability are required for private regulatory regimes to be effective, particularly because such mechanisms would secure compliance.
Thus, gaining legitimacy would be one strong factor enabling private standards to diffuse. While the concept of legitimacy within the context of private regulation is still complex, a common argument is that ‘[l]egitimacy at its most basic means acceptance as appropriate by relevant audiences’.Footnote 63 ‘Relevant audiences’ in the context of GAP are those constituencies who accept a new foreign private norm and decide to make changes, including producers, retailers and consumers in receiving States. In the context of agro-food trade, it is crucial to include producers in developing countries. In order for those constituencies to accept the foreign norms as appropriate, the governance institution of the foreign norm must secure participation or transparency.Footnote 64 This is so-called ‘input legitimacy’. The argument regarding the need for ‘proceduralization’Footnote 65—inclusiveness, openness and transparency of private regulation—can also support the concern over gaining legitimacy.
That said, input legitimacy or proceduralization may not necessarily ensure the creation of ‘appropriate’ norms for all related constituencies in terms of substantive contents. So-called ‘output legitimacy’ is therefore necessary as well.Footnote 66 ‘Appropriate’ norms are standards that are suitable for local objectives, which may be different from shared global goals. This is why it is at times argued that it is difficult to require ‘output legitimacy’. It has been argued that ‘different stakeholders will tend to define different objectives, or even similar objectives differently’.Footnote 67 On this point, there must be room in the creation and enforcement of standards to allow for ‘divergence’ or ‘difference’, which overrides ‘convergence’ and ‘sameness’ in order to receive wider acceptance. Such an argument on the need for some divergence and flexibilities is also related to the concern over the friction or mismatch caused by the diffusion of global standards and actual local practices. It has been argued that ‘[l]ittle scrutiny is given to how such [global] standards are made to work locally, and the consequences of such implementation’.Footnote 68 This point echoes the discussion in the previous subsection A, regarding the risk of legal transplants and its unsuccessful outcome.
D. Summary
This subsection summarizes four important factors in researching private norm diffusion, drawn from the three bodies of scholarship described above. First, private norm diffusion, similar to the diffusion of State laws, may cause various effects in receiving States. Importantly, there is a risk of negative effects if there is a mismatch between foreign norms and prevailing circumstances in receiving States. It is therefore critical to examine the appropriateness of foreign norms in local contexts. Second, market forces are a major driving factor for private norm diffusion, while other factors—such as the low costs of regulatory adjustment and the role of NGOs/experts—may supplement the diffusion. Third, after the arrival of a foreign private norm, the interaction of public and private schemes in the receiving State may help diffuse the new foreign norm. Lastly, the legitimacy of private regulation/regimes can contribute to their smooth reception in the receiving State.
III. GLOBALG.A.P. AND ITS EFFORTS TO EXPAND BEYOND EUROPE
Both this and the following sections examine the proliferation of GLOBALG.A.P. as an empirical case and consider to what extent its findings support the analysis in Section II. Private norm diffusion is initiated by exporters of norms and standards who intend to promote their norms and standards outside their jurisdictions. Regulatory change may occur when the receiving side responds to the exporters' attempt. Thus, the diffusion of GLOBALG.A.P. is likely to happen through two-way interactions between GLOBALG.A.P. and the receiving parties. This Section looks at the motivations and aspirations of GLOBALG.A.P. as an exporter of GAP norms and analyses GLOBALG.A.P.'s efforts to work with local GAP schemes.
A. Historical Background and Developments
GLOBALG.A.P. was originally founded as ‘EurepGAP’ by the Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group in 1997.Footnote 69 The working group was concerned about the inadequacy of national food safety laws and the reputational costs associated with high-profile food safety crises in Europe.Footnote 70 Such concerns prompted group members to take steps to ensure food safety and quality by regulating their supply chains. However, the GLOBALG.A.P. scheme was concerned not only with food safety: the scheme took a holistic and integrated approach which covered food safety, environmental protection and workers' and animal welfare in farming.Footnote 71
The regulatory structure of GLOBALG.A.P. is complex and dense. GLOBALG.A.P. has developed standards for several categories and one of them is the ‘integrated farm assurance standard’.Footnote 72 This is divided into three production areas: ‘crops’, ‘livestock’ and ‘aquaculture’. The category of ‘crops’ includes ‘fruit and vegetables’, ‘coffee’, ‘flowers’ and so on. The requirements for ‘fruit and vegetables’, for instance, currently cover 228 items—these items (and also items in other subcategories like ‘coffee’ or ‘flowers’) are the core substantive standards of GLOBALG.A.P., the so-called ‘control points and compliance criteria (CPCC)’. Among the control points for ‘fruit and vegetables’, 142 cover issues of food safety, 40 address environmental protection, 28 workers’ welfare and 18 traceability.Footnote 73 The standards are revised every four years to ensure continued relevance and effectiveness,Footnote 74 and the current operating standards for fruit and vegetables have been updated in ‘Version Four’, which was finalized in March 2011 and became obligatory in January 2012.
When producers apply for GLOBALG.A.P. certification, not all the CPCC have the same level of importance. GLOBALG.A.P. standards are graded in a three-level system that determines the required extent of compliance with each standard: standards of ‘major must’ require full compliance, while ‘minor must’ standards require 95 per cent compliance and other kinds of standards are only ‘recommended’.Footnote 75 In terms of verification of compliance, GLOBAL G.A.P. itself does not verify compliance and issue certifications for producers; instead, it put into place a third-party certification system in order to assure objectivity and credibility. Some scholars argue that such third-party certification systems play an important role in promoting private regulation: ‘Verification is important because it provides the validation necessary for a certification programme to achieve legitimacy.’Footnote 76
In other words, independently verified commitment to the standards strengthens the credibility of the schemes and therefore it fuels promotion of the use of such schemes.Footnote 77 So far, GLOBALG.A.P. has made agreements with 142 certification bodies operating around the world.Footnote 78 The process of certification and the activities of certification bodies are also subject to detailed rules under GLOBALG.A.P.,Footnote 79 which has sanction provisions against certification bodies in the case of their own non-compliance.
In terms of the historical development of GLOBALG.A.P., two events are worth mentioning. The first is the attainment of an equal partnership between retailers and producers in the governance of GLOBALG.A.P. As mentioned, GLOBALG.A.P. was originally initiated by retailers; however, since 2001 the governing organs of GLOBALG.A.P. have comprised an equal number of retailers and producers.Footnote 80 Members of the Board and the three Technical Committees are elected from among GLOBALG.A.P. members.Footnote 81 Membership is open for any retailers, suppliers or producers in the world. This movement to equivalence between retailers and producers can be seen as an important step in gaining ‘input legitimacy’ for GLOBALG.A.P.Footnote 82
Another development that merits attention is the scheme's renaming: EurepGAP became GLOBALG.A.P. in 2008. According to one news source:
This growing connection with the industry's smallholders outside Europe has altered GLOBALG.A.P.'s public image, according to the organisation's managing director Kristian Möller. ‘The name change is all about how the system is perceived.Footnote 83
Indeed, there have been considerable efforts by GLOBALG.A.P. to reach outside Europe, emphasizing that it is not serving only producers and retailers in Europe. According to the current website of GLOBALG.A.P., it is described that ‘GLOBALG.A.P. is the worldwide standard that assures [Good Agricultural Practice]’.Footnote 84 The scheme's name change has contributed to promoting its global purposes to some extent. Next, we will turn to GLOBALG.A.P.'s efforts to connect local GAP initiatives with GLOBALG.A.P. standards.
B. Reaching outside Europe
There are two ways in which GLOBALG.A.P. is undertaking norm diffusion. First, GLOBALG.A.P. standards are being implemented by increasing the number of certified producers outside Europe. The number of certified producers outside Europe is increasing but at different rates in different regions and countries. For instance, according to the GLOBALG.A.P.'s annual report,Footnote 85 ‘Europe still accounts for 74% of all certifications, with half of all producers from Southern Europe. Spain, Italy, and Greece are the countries with the most certified producers. The Americas [such as Chile and Argentina] and Africa are gaining a larger share of overall certifications.’Footnote 86 In comparison, the number certified in Asia is low. The Asian country with the most certified producers is China, with 280 in 2011. This article addresses Japan and Thailand, which in 2011 had 20 and 263, respectively.Footnote 87
To increase the number of certifications, GLOBALG.A.P. has adopted a system of ‘national technical working groups’ that are established voluntarily by GLOBALG.A.P. members. GLOBALG.A.P. explains: ‘Think Global, Act Local. That's the philosophy at the heart of GLOBALG.A.P.'s activities. And that's why GLOBALG.A.P. members have set up National Technical Working Groups (NTWGs).’Footnote 88 Thus, this system of setting up national technical working groups is one way to stimulate interactions between GLOBALG.A.P. and local people, thereby increasing understanding of GLOBALG.A.P. There are currently 45 national working groups in the world.Footnote 89 Those groups can create national interpretation guidelines of GLOBALG.A.P. standards that are suitable for their local needs, but one should be mindful that this is subject to the approval of GLOBALG.A.P. Committees.Footnote 90
Expanding the implementation of GLOBALG.A.P. as above is the primary and direct way to promote GLOBALG.A.P. compliance. However, there is the second way to promote GLOBALG.A.P. standards outside Europe: the ‘benchmarking’ between GLOBALG.A.P. and local GAP schemes. For local GAP scheme owners, to be benchmarked with GLOBALG.A.P. means obtaining a status equivalent to GLOBALG.A.P. standards. With a benchmarked status, agricultural products certified by the local scheme can gain market access to Europe and also to other markets where people are interested in purchasing agricultural products in line with GLOBALG.A.P. standards. There have been some studies on the early cases of benchmarking between GLOBALG.A.P. and local schemes:Footnote 91 in 2005, ChileGAP became the first scheme to be benchmarked with GLOBALG.A.P.;Footnote 92 the government of Mexico made efforts for its national quality scheme to be benchmarked with GLOBALG.A.P. and succeeded in 2006;Footnote 93 and KenyaGAP also sought benchmarked status and gained it in 2007.Footnote 94
This article especially focuses on the benchmarking process as a vehicle of norm diffusion and proliferation, rather than on the direct implementation of GLOBALG.A.P. standards. From the perspective of GLOBALG.A.P., the two ways (ie the direct implementation of GLOBALG.A.P. and benchmarking with GLOBALG.A.P.) are not different in terms of its norm diffusion, as both can generate agricultural products in line with GLOBALG.A.P. standards. However, from the perspective of local schemes, benchmarking and direct implementation are different: benchmarking engages with local schemes, whereas direct implementation does not engage.
GLOBALG.A.P. started the benchmarking procedure in 2001. The benchmarking process starts from the submission of an application by a local standard owner. When the application is submitted, the applicant's certification process and substantive standards are evaluated for their equivalence with GLOBALG.A.P., in accordance with the ‘Benchmark Cross-Reference Checklist’. This procedure is subject to the benchmarking regulation, and a new version of the regulation (Version Four) became effective in February 2012.Footnote 95
One major change introduced by the new regulation (Version Four) is the adoption of two different levels of recognition:Footnote 96 the status of full equivalence, which remains the same, and that of ‘resembling’. Under the new ‘resembling’ status, the applicant's standards are not considered fully equivalent to GLOBALG.A.P. standards, so applicants are allowed to omit some parts of GLOBALG.A.P.'s CPCC (for instance, the standards related to workers' welfare).
By introducing the ‘resembling’ status, GLOBALG.A.P. is arguably pushing its diffusion policy further: GLOBALG.A.P. appears to compromise its higher level of standard integrity for more universal standard diffusion. Prior to Version Four, GLOBALG.A.P.'s benchmarking procedure was rigid in order to pursue the integrity of GAP standards being implemented worldwide. The applicant's standards were evaluated against GLOBALG.A.P.'s CPCC, which included ‘major must’ and ‘minor must’ standards (as mentioned, ‘minor must’ requires 95 per cent similarities). This remains the same, but under the previous benchmarking procedure, 22 local schemes gained benchmarked status: 11 schemes of European origin, 5 of South American, 4 of Asian and 2 of African. It appears that GLOBALG.A.P.'s norm diffusion through benchmarking had not been achieving sufficient proliferation outside Europe. In some situations, schemes had been newly developed and created with an intention to obtain a benchmarking position with GLOBALG.A.P., and therefore it may not have been very difficult to adapt their structures to GLOBALG.A.P. standards—especially if the new schemes had financial and administrative resources.
On the other hand, there had been concerns that GLOBALG.A.P.'s equivalent requirements were too burdensome for some local GAP schemes that had been operating long before the rise of GLOBALG.A.P.—in order to obtain equivalence, such local standards would have had to change significantly to fit GLOBALG.A.P. standards.Footnote 97 With the aforementioned revisions in Version Four, it is speculated that more standard owners will apply for benchmarking under the ‘resembling’ status in order to inform markets that their local standard is at least partially in line with GLOBALG.A.P. standards, even if the two schemes are not fully equivalent. Information about resemblance rather than full equivalence may be enough to increase market access. The new benchmarking regulation may result in less integrity, but may achieve greater universality; the pursuit of universality necessarily involves accepting some ‘divergence’ or ‘difference’ of local GAP standards from GLOBALG.A.P. standards.
IV. RECEIVING GLOBALG.A.P.: JAPAN, THAILAND AND THE US
The previous section examined GLOBALG.A.P.'s efforts to expand beyond Europe. This section looks at the receiving side of GLOBALG.A.P., primarily by investigating the case of Japan, but also by briefly looking at the situations in Thailand and the US. Each of the three cases raises interesting and important issues in the light of the four factors of private norm diffusion presented in Section II: (1) the role of market forces in promoting norm diffusion; (2) the legitimacy of the private regime; (3) the interaction between private and public standards and (4) the appropriateness of GLOBALG.A.P. in the local context.
A. The Case of Japan
1. Historical background and developments
In Japan, awareness of the importance of GAP emerged against the background of the food safety crisis in 1996. Since then, GAP has been recognized in Japan as a tool to improve unhygienic food practices. A first local GAP scheme arose from a private entity—the development of the ‘JGAP’ standards in Japan was initiated by producers. The first step came from Katayama farm, an apple producer in Aomori prefecture. In 2004, Katayama farm became the first EurepGAP-certified producer in Japan. One year later, Katayama farm and a few other producers (including the second EurepGAP-certified farm, Wa-go-en farm in Chiba prefecture) created their own GAP scheme named ‘JGAP’.Footnote 98 One of the founding group's most important aims in developing the JGAP system was to create a GAP scheme that was suitable to the Japanese farming context.Footnote 99 In November 2006, the founding assembly of JGAP was held with 30 farms.
Although the JGAP standards were developed by producers, JGAP's founding producer group actively sought the participation of retailers. By July 2008, the governing board of JGAP consisted of seven producers and seven retailers, ‘an equal partnership’ much like the current governance structure of GLOBALG.A.P.Footnote 100 Several major Japanese retailers have joined the governing board, including Aeon Co. Ltd, COOP Japan (Japanese Consumer's Cooperative Union), The Daiei Inc., and Ito-Yokado Co. Ltd. Like GLOBALG.A.P., the JGAP system also introduced a third-party certification mechanism in 2007.Footnote 101 By April 2012, 1,681 producers had been JGAP certified.Footnote 102
A second goal of the founding group was to seek GLOBALG.A.P. benchmarked status: the founding producers aimed to establish a higher-level GAP scheme in Japan that could become a mainstream global standard. In 2007, JGAP's ‘Version 2.1’ standards achieved GLOBALG.A.P. equivalence status.
However, it was gradually noted by the JGAP governing board that some GLOBALG.A.P. standards do not fit the Japanese farming context. Also, domestic producers' demand for GLOBALG.A.P. equivalence status has not been strong. In 2009, JGAP decided not to maintain its GLOBALG.A.P. equivalent status and made modifications to the structure of JGAP standards during regular version updating.Footnote 103 JGAP identified several standards as unique to the European style of farming, separating them from its basic standards. Accordingly, JGAP has created a separate set of standards applied exclusively to fresh fruits and vegetables that are intended for export to foreign markets (hereinafter, ‘JGAP's export standards’). Japanese producers not intending to export their products are only required to comply with a basic set of standards (hereinafter, ‘JGAP's basic standards’) and do not have to comply with the separate export standards.Footnote 104 By creating the dual system, JGAP is seeking a ‘localization’ of GAP—an application of GAP to the Japanese farming context in order to meet local needs specifically.
In separate efforts, the Japanese government—in particular, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Fishery (the MAFF)—also sought to introduce GAP policy in Japan, but it has moved very slowly. The term ‘GAP’ first appeared in a Cabinet Decision in March 2005, in the ‘Basic Plan for Food, Agriculture, and Farm Villages’.Footnote 105 The Decision stated that the Japanese government would develop a manual in order to establish and promulgate GAP schemes in Japan.Footnote 106 In 2007, the MAFF announced a basic framework for GAP.Footnote 107 This ‘basic GAP’ is a simple checklist which consists of around 30 checkpoints in the production of vegetables, fruits, rice, wheat and so on.
Each Japanese prefecture reacted differently to this basic GAP. Consequently, different GAP schemes have been developed in different regions. Some prefectures created schemes that went beyond the MAFF's basic GAP, while others were content to follow the simple checklist proposed by the MAFF. Multiple regional GAP programmes thus existed inside Japan, even as the private JGAP scheme grew.
Against this complex landscape, the MAFF attempted to unify the GAP schemes in Japan, inventing the ‘guidelines for GAP’ in 2010.Footnote 108 These guidelines were written in more detail than the basic GAP of 2007. They covered nine different product categories, such as vegetables, rice, wheat, fruits and tea, with each category consisting of 40 to 50 control points. Notably, these guidelines include a table comparing those control points with existing governmental requirements and showing how each control point matches existing legislation, regulations or decrees. Some points do not coincide with existing governmental requirements, but they are very few. Most of the checkpoints actually align with governmental requirements. This suggests that the MAFF guidelines were carefully crafted so as not to exceed existing governmental requirements. In this regard, JGAP standards are still going beyond the MAFF guidelines because they exceed existing government requirements.
2. Evaluation
This subsection analyses how and to what extent GLOBALG.A.P. standards are received in Japan through the launch of the JGAP system, according to the factors presented in Section II.
First, we need to address whether the role of market forces was the main factor of the reach of GLOBALG.A.P. into Japan. The JGAP initiative originated in food crisis and not in export interests targeting Europe.Footnote 109 In this respect, it can be said that a private GAP initiative was started in Japan not because of market forces but because of the ideas of GAP itself. As stated, the JGAP founding group's aim was not to use GLOBALG.A.P. as a basis in developing the JGAP standards. Rather, the founding group aimed to establish a GAP scheme suitable for Japanese farming. Nonetheless, we can still find the effects of GLOBALG.A.P. on the JGAP system in the founders’ desire to seek a GLOBALG.A.P. benchmarked status. The JGAP founding producer group perceived GLOBALG.A.P. as a mainstream standard for international trade in fruits and vegetables, one with which JGAP should be recognized as equivalent.Footnote 110 Also, we can see the influence of GLOBALG.A.P. on JGAP in the structure of JGAP standards: JGAP standards cover the issues of workers' health and safety as well as the environment and conservation. JGAP seemed to be inspired by GLOBALG.A.P.'s ideas regarding what ‘good’ agricultural practices were.
Second, the literature suggests that the legitimacy of the private regime may influence the reception of the norm. In this vein, we need to look at ‘input legitimacy’ of JGAP. Whereas GLOBALG.A.P. was created by retailers, JGAP was initially driven by producers. The question may arise as to why producers began the development of JGAP rather than retailers. The reason is not apparent, but it should also be pointed out that Japanese retailers were not uninterested in the GAP movement. Two major Japanese retailers—Aeon and COOP Japan—separately developed GAP systems for their private brands.Footnote 111 It can be said that the creation of JGAP by producers has united retailers' interests with the producers' movement. This is also reflected in the current governance of JGAP, which includes the same number of producers and retailers in its governing board.
Third, the interaction between the public and private standards occurred in Japan's case. The relation between JGAP and the governmental GAP scheme can be said to be complementary, especially after the ‘guidelines for GAP’ were established by the MAFF in 2010. With the governmental ‘guidelines for GAP’, JGAP can focus more on introducing itself to producers instead of explaining why GAP is necessary in the first place. Also, JGAP can mention that their standards are consistent with the governmental MAFF guidelines for GAP.Footnote 112 Local GAP initiatives that are consistent with the MAFF guidelines can receive subsidies from the Japanese government,Footnote 113 which means that farmers can receive government assistance to comply with JGAP standards, since JGAP standards meet the MAFF guidelines. As suggested in Section II.C, this is an example of a governmental scheme providing a foundation for ‘private regulation to operate effectively and credibly’.Footnote 114
Lastly, we need to look at the actual arrival of GLOBALG.A.P. in Japan, including mismatch between the idea of GLOBALG.A.P. and the Japanese context. It is crucial to evaluate JGAP's attempt to seek GAP ‘localization’ by creating the dual system: JGAP's basic standards and export standards. Such ‘localization’ by JGAP raises a question previously addressed: the appropriateness of GLOBALG.A.P. In the JGAP case, the issue is whether JGAP ‘localization’ happened because there was too little room in the GLOBAL G.A.P. standards to allow for sufficient ‘divergence’ or ‘difference’ to make GLOBALG.A.P. suitable for local objectives.
JGAP's export standards consist of 46 control points, and these are identified as not fitting the Japanese context for several reasons. Some of the 46 relate to objective factors. One example is standards that apply to producers growing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In Japan, growing GMOs is not prohibited, though it is not yet popular. Another example is standards on the use of biocides, waxes and plant protection products for post-harvest treatment. The use of such post-harvest chemicals is not popular in Japan either. Therefore, JGAP's standards are differentiated from GLOBALG.A.P. by excluding these control points due to their irrelevance. Having the dual system can be viewed as a pragmatic decision made by JGAP in order to clarify that their basic standards cover only the Japanese farming context.
However, other reasons for JGAP's export standards appear to be less objective. Among the 46 control points identified as being unsuitable to domestic farming, 11 are concerned with the environment and conservation and 10 address workers' health, safety and welfare. This does not mean that JGAP's basic standards do not incorporate standards related to such issues: there are 20 control points concerning the environment and conservation and 19 control points concerning workers' health, safety and welfare in JGAP's basic standards. Thus, JGAP does focus on these issues, but it does so differently from GLOBALG.A.P. For instance, 4 out of 11 control points concerning the environment under JGAP's export standards are related to the conservation of biodiversity. Similarly, 8 out of 10 control points concerning workers' health, safety and welfare under JGAP's export standards are concerned with workers' welfare (not workers' health and safety issues). This suggests that some GLOBALG.A.P. standards relating specifically to the conservation of biodiversity or workers' welfare do not fit into current Japanese agricultural circumstances and knowledge. However, it may be simplistic to say that these GLOBALG.A.P. standards are ‘inappropriate’ in the Japanese context. Rather, JGAP's exclusion of these specific control points may reflect a reluctance to change current Japanese practices without commercial reasons for doing so.
B. A Comparative Case: Thailand
This subsection briefly looks at the situation in Thailand from the four factors of private norm diffusion. The subsection also compares experiences of Thailand and Japan in importing the ideas of GLOBALG.A.P.
In Thailand, the government and a private body began to take actions towards developing a GAP scheme almost at the same time. The government's national scheme, called ‘Q-GAP’, was established in 2004. It was launched out of common concerns in the country on the use of agro-chemicals in the harvesting process.Footnote 115 The Thai government's motivation was to provide a basic GAP scheme for Thai producers, similar to what the Japanese government intended for Japanese producers. While Q-GAP certification was a good introduction to GAP for Thai producers, it did not lead to good export opportunities for them. One reason for the lack of export opportunities was that Q-GAP certification was done by the government itself rather than by a third party. This diminished Q-GAP's independence and credibility.Footnote 116 Another reason was that Q-GAP was formulated with only eight standardsFootnote 117 and was far less detailed than GLOBALG.A.P. (named EurepGAP at that time). Also, the Q-GAP standards did not cover labour or environmental protection issues. These two aspects starkly distinguished Q-GAP from EurepGAP.
Meanwhile, a private initiative began in 2001. Exporting companies (eg KC Fresh) proposed that a GAP system be created, with safety concerns in exporting baby corn and asparagus to the EU. Professors in the Research and Development Institute and Faculty of Agriculture at Kasetsart University (Kamphaengsaen Campus, NakhonPathom) responded and decided to provide training services.Footnote 118 The professors cooperated with private companies, and they created the first private scheme applied to the western part of Thailand. The scheme was named ‘Western GAP’ and addressed fresh fruits and vegetables. Western GAP was based on EurepGAP Version 2.1 (October 2004).Footnote 119 While EurepGAP Version 2.1 consisted of 213 control points, Western GAP consisted of only 50 control points. Although it had fewer standards, Western GAP did cover workers' health and the environment.Footnote 120
Western GAP was the basis for the ThaiGAP scheme, which was launched in 2006.Footnote 121 Thus, ThaiGAP has remained similar in form to the Western GAP multi-stakeholder initiative. ThaiGAP was created with the participation of various actors instead of being driven by either retailers (like GLOBALG.A.P.) or producers (like JGAP). This is reflected in ThaiGAP's governing board, which currently consists of 20 members: 5 producer associations, 1 retailer association, 4 governmental organizations, 7 individuals appointed on the merits of expertise, 2 NGOs (including Kasetsart University) and 1 consumer group.Footnote 122 In this vein, it can be said that the ThaiGAP attempted to secure ‘input legitimacy’.
In Thailand, in contrast to Japan, the impetus for the development of Western GAP and then ThaiGAP was mainly to create opportunities for exports to Europe. This is also illustrated by their efforts to benchmark with GLOBALGAP. In 2008, the ThaiGAP Institute under the Board of Trade of Thailand started to prepare an application to benchmark ThaiGAP standards with GLOBALG.A.P. The motivation for this was to place Thai exporters on more equal footing when trading with European markets. The benchmarking process required raising the level of ThaiGAP standards to make them as high as those of GLOBALG.A.P. as well as fully incorporating environmental and workers’ health issues. This was not an easy process for the ThaiGAP team, and it was not until May 2010 that ThaiGAP was finally approved as a GLOBALG.A.P. equivalent.Footnote 123
With regard to the interactions between private and public GAP standards, both Q-GAP and ThaiGAP continue to exist.Footnote 124 It can be said that each serves a different purpose. While ThaiGAP focused on promoting the exportation to the EU, the Thai government had a different motivation behind the development of Q-GAP: the government took a ‘gradual approach’,Footnote 125 beginning with basic GAP standards that would be relatively simple for farmers to follow. It is suggested that such a gradual approach is needed for Asian local farms and markets, where domestic demand for higher-level third-party certification has not been sufficiently strong.Footnote 126 Perhaps, ThaiGAP and Q-GAP are creating a supportive environment together for Thai farmers: one intends to support exporting opportunities and the other attempts to upgrade domestic farming practices.
After the completion of the benchmarking process with GLOBALG.A.P., the ThaiGAP team has made an important move by creating two types of standards: ‘ThaiGAP Level 1’ maintains high-level standards and targets European markets, while ‘ThaiGAP Level 2’ contains around 80 per cent of the Level 1 standards and targets products sold in Thai domestic markets.Footnote 127 This dual system is similar to JGAP's, which differentiated standards for exports to Europe from standards for farms serving local Japanese markets. The establishment of a dual system is an ongoing project of ThaiGAP, thus it remains to be seen how it will be implemented in the future. However, the dual system made by ThaiGAP and JGAP sends a message to GLOBALG.A.P.—as suggested previously, this is the question of the appropriateness of GLOBALG.A.P. and some flexibility is necessary to expand further outside Europe. The next subsection briefly addresses a recent response from GLOBALG.A.P. to accommodate such flexibility, on the basis of the GLOBALG.A.P.'s experience in the US.
C. Implications from GLOBALG.A.P.'s Experience in the US
So far, we have seen how local schemes in Japan and Thailand responded to the arrival of GLOBALGAP. In order to diffuse and be accepted outside of Europe, GLOBALG.A.P. itself has had to make some changes. Section III.B explained that GLOBALG.A.P. already amended its benchmarking structure into a two-tiered system—one tier for full equivalence and the other of a ‘resembling’ status. This subsection highlights one more recent change in GLOBALG.A.P. which has an important implication for the fourth issue of private norm diffusion, that is, the appropriateness of GLOBALG.A.P. in the local context.
So far, GLOBALG.A.P. has applied its standards (the so-called ‘control points and compliance criteria (CPCC)’) uniformly in its direct implementation and certification process. As stated in Section III.B, the only system previously allowed to take local contexts into account under GLOBALG.A.P. was that of the voluntarily established ‘national technical working groups'. However, GLOBALG.A.P. recently designed and approved a separate set of standards applied exclusively to the US market that only addresses food safety and excludes the environmental protection and workers' welfare issues (‘GLOBALG.A.P. IFA Produce Safety Version 4’).Footnote 128 This development occurred because of concerns about the limited number of GLOBALG.A.P. certifications obtained by US producers (eg by 2011 the number was 470) and because of US producers' negative opinions about the inclusion of environmental protection and workers' welfare issues in GAP standards.Footnote 129 Such a negative reaction to GLOBALG.A.P.'s ideas is a distinctive feature of the US case and contrasts with Japan and Thailand, where the full set of GLOBALG.A.P. standards (including those on the environment and labour) was initially accepted through their benchmarking processes.
In the US, the proliferation of GAP standards occurred in a non-harmonized, fragmented order. One of the GAP standards was a public one: the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) GAPs. However, many private standards have been operating as well. In June 2009, a US trade association, United Fresh (the United Fresh Produce Association) started a harmonization project of various GAP standards in the US.Footnote 130 This project, called ‘Produce GAPs Harmonization Initiative’, aimed to create a set of standards ‘that is globally recognized, but specifically applicable to North America operations’.Footnote 131 It was reported that ‘[r]ather than create a new standard, the [Technical Working Group] began its efforts by examining similarities and differences in many of the existing GAP standards’.Footnote 132 Eighteen standards operating in the US were chosen and examined.Footnote 133 The harmonization project was completed in September 2012, resulting in ‘Harmonized Standards’.Footnote 134 Except for workers’ health and hygiene issues, the Harmonized Standards mainly consist of food safety issues and do not address the environment or workers’ welfare.
During the United Fresh harmonizing process, GLOBALG.A.P. was recognized as one existing standard in the US. However, in contrast to the cases of Thailand and Japan, there were already numerous private GAP standards operating in the US. In this situation, GLOBALG.A.P. thought that it needed to create a separate set of standards for the US market in order to further proliferate in the US.Footnote 135 Given the clearly different values held in Europe and the US regarding the inclusion of non-food safety issues in agricultural production processes, GLOBALG.A.P. needed to be pragmatic. Norm diffusion requires consideration for local contexts and sometimes even sacrificing the integrity of original standards.
V. CONCLUSION: TO WHAT EXTENT SHOULD LOCAL CONTEXT BE CONSIDERED?
Focusing on the case of GLOBALG.A.P., this article has addressed how private norms can proliferate worldwide and transform emerging local private bodies. This concluding section highlights what we can draw from the examples of Japan, Thailand and the US, in the light of the four factors of private norm diffusion: (1) the role of market forces in promoting norm diffusion; (2) the legitimacy of the private regime; (3) the interaction between private and public standards and (4) the appropriateness of GLOBALG.A.P. in the local context.
First, GLOBALG.A.P. can depend on market forces to promote its standards, since local GAP schemes outside Europe may have a strong incentive to adopt GLOBALG.A.P. in order to access the EU market. This effect has been largely seen in the case of ThaiGAP. However, the role of market forces is not always relevant: the case of Japan shows that the receiving side of GLOBALG.A.P. may not always have strong interests in exporting to the EU. Trading interests vary according to goods (eg agricultural products) being covered by private regulation/regimes.
However, ideas and norms may migrate without trade relations or export interests. In Japan's case, the JGAP scheme aspired to make its standards as high as GLOBALG.A.P.'s via the benchmarking process, viewing GLOBALG.A.P. as best practices. In political science, this mechanism is explained as ‘normative emulation/mimicry’: while ‘[t]here is little functional need to adopt’,Footnote 136 JGAP followed GLOBALG.A.P. standards. On the other hand, there are examples where foreign ideas and norms do not (or barely) affect local actors. The case of the US was one such case. Also, domestic markets in Japan and Thailand, where there are no interests in exporting agricultural products to the EU, appear to be in a similar situation. This point is addressed later in (4) the appropriateness of GLOBALG.A.P. in the local context.
Second, the diffusion of a private norm is affected by the legitimacy of the private regime. Like GLOBALG.A.P., both JGAP and ThaiGAP seemed concerned over the ‘input legitimacy’ of their governance schemes. The creators of private regimes thus appear to regard a participatory and transparent mechanism as a vital element for success. However, as noted, the ‘input legitimacy’ of the governance scheme does not necessarily secure ‘output legitimacy’ (ie the new norms may not be appropriate to certain local contexts). This point is also discussed under (4) below.
Third, this article examined public and private interactions in the process of norm diffusion. As the cases of Japan and Thailand have shown, the coexistence of a governmental GAP scheme and a private scheme may help the ideas of GLOBALG.A.P. diffuse.
Fourth, the greatest challenge for private norm diffusion is the appropriateness of foreign private norms in the local context. Notably, both JGAP and ThaiGAP later adopted dual systems, with two different sets of standards that producers can choose to follow. If a producer is interested in exporting to Europe, then the producer can choose to be certified under the set of standards matching GLOBALG.A.P. If a producer is interested in selling products only in the domestic market, the producer can choose the set of standards more concerned with local production processes.
Scholars note that accepting foreign norms and standards causes friction and tension in the receiving side's social and cultural life. This problem has been recognized in importation of European laws,Footnote 137 and a similar issue might occur in the context of private norm importation as well. In this vein, the dual system, adopted by JGAP and ThaiGAP, may become an important opportunity to make GAP standards locally meaningful. Moreover, the dual system may become an important step for the local schemes themselves (JGAP and ThaiGAP) to be accepted and understood in their countries. Then, the standards for domestic markets may become an interim step for local producers to seek a higher-level certification under the standards for exports in the future. Meanwhile, the GLOBALG.A.P.'s ideas of ‘good’ agricultural practices can gradually proliferate under the standards established for domestic markets.
One implication drawn from the cases of Japan and Thailand is that the receiving side is not a passive actor:Footnote 138 it can be a competitor by creating norms tailored to its local setting and accepting the GLOBALG.A.P. standards selectively. Indeed, there may be several rivals of GLOBALG.A.P. in the receiving State. The exporter of a norm (eg GLOBALG.A.P.) may therefore need to change. For instance, the GLOBALG.A.P. standards were modified to enter the US.Footnote 139 It will take several years to evaluate whether the exclusion of the environmental protection and workers' welfare issues from the US version was an appropriate way for GLOBALG.A.P. to proliferate in the US as including these issues had been an important feature of GLOBALG.A.P. One concern is that GAP in the US will not be transformed as dramatically as it would have been had the US received the full set of GLOBALG.A.P. standards. The US case may exemplify a dilemma regarding norm importation: ‘[w]hile importation is facilitated if the legal norm can be translated and appropriated to fit the local context, …[legal norms] are more transformative if they challenge existing assumption’.Footnote 140
Research on private norm diffusion has just begun. Local transformation brought on by norm diffusion may take years and may even be invisible. Consequently, this article's analysis is limited to short-term research and to three research locations (Japan, Thailand and the US). However, if it is successful, private norm diffusion is a salient element for global regulatory change. It is important to trace the transformative effects over time and also broaden the research into different receiving countries.
