This book is an important and unique contribution to the study of private regulatory governance. Two decades after the rise of social and environmental certification programs, many scholars have examined individual initiatives and discrete sectors. Graeme Auld does the field a service by producing a rigorous, cross-sector, multiprogram analysis that challenges several assumptions about the initiation and evolution of certification programs. He aims to explain the differences between initiatives and sectors, and discusses the implications of these findings for certification as a form of global governance. Auld’s analysis draws on three meticulously constructed analytic narratives, each following the development of certification programs in a specific sector: forestry, coffee, and fisheries.
The overall argument is that certification programs emerge in ways that reflect political opportunities, the market context, and the structure, scope, and governance of previous initiatives within the sector, and that these initial moments have an enduring impact on the evolution of individual initiatives and sectoral patterns. Auld examines six hypotheses on the emergence of new initiatives. Among his findings are the following: Initiatives are more likely to develop locally (before going global) when barriers to entry are low; initiatives are more likely to develop globally first when the supply chain includes points where multinational companies are concentrated and when the product is highly traded internationally; and founders’ information and ideas about the problems facing the sector shape the program’s regulatory domain and scope of policy. Auld then studies four hypotheses regarding the evolution and replication of initiatives, and asks why some sectors are more fragmented (have more programs) than others. One finding is that certification programs lose support (actors exit) when there is greater opportunity to be effective outside of the organization than potential to influence (have voice) within the organization. Another is that when initiatives restrict the scope of their policies, new entrants are likely to emerge to regulate additional activities. The author makes clear that these aspects of program evolution and sectoral patterns are largely but not completely dependent on the process of initiation.
Constructing Private Governance is organized into eight chapters. The first two draw on extant literature to develop 10 hypotheses. The following six test these hypotheses against analytic narratives. Chapters 3 and 4 examine forestry, focusing on the Forest Stewardship Council and the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. Chapters 5 and 6 analyze five coffee initiatives: the International Foundation for Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM); Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, now Fairtrade International; Rainforest Alliance (Sustainable Agriculture Network); Utz Kapeh; and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. And Chapters 7 and 8 explore six fisheries initiatives, including IFOAM; the Marine Stewardship Council; the Global Aquaculture Alliance; Global Good Agricultural Practices (Global GAP); Friend of the Sea; and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. The first chapter in each pair examines the political and market context from which initiatives emerged. The second examines how they shaped individual programs’ initiation, consolidation, and evolution. Timelines and graphics aid readers in following each narrative. The final chapter draws on empirical findings to present and illustrate the author’s arguments.
The contributions of this work are numerous—here I highlight three. First, Auld counters the conventional wisdom that increasing the demand for certified products necessarily results in an increase of the benefits that certifications aim to generate (e.g., positive environmental and social outcomes). His research shows that market demand begets a more complicated set of consequences. These may include impeding existing organizations’ ability to adapt, destabilizing programs, increasing the threat of new entrants, and fragmenting initiatives. In the contemporary moment of expanding political consumerism, this finding raises red flags and demands further scholarly attention.
Second, the book contributes to the growing conversation on the consequences of competition between certifications. Some argue that initiatives will compete for corporate licensees by watering down standards and generating fewer benefits, while others show how competition can be a race to the top. Here, Auld makes an important contribution by explaining how and why new initiatives decide whether to support an existing initiative, become a competitor, or create a complementary program.
Third, the author’s explanation of the ways in which early decisions shape future challenges has an important message for scholars and practitioners advising new and potential certification programs. For example, organizations that work globally at first may face competition later from other global initiatives or locally rooted, context-specific programs, while local-first initiatives may struggle to coordinate several small initiatives in an effort to go global. As labels emerge in new sectors, these insights can aid in creating viable strategies for capturing and maintaining market share.
If there is one shortcoming of this book, it is that concepts are not always clearly defined, vague terms generate uncertainties, and causal arguments are not always presented in a linear fashion. The result is unnecessarily jargon-y prose and passages that demand rereading. To illustrate: In the first chapter, the author previews the book’s argument by writing: “To understand how certification programs have formed and evolved, it is necessary to examine how collective action in markets is affected by the degree of market demand, particularly during the early stages of program development, and to combine analyses of collective action with a recognition of path dependence, since early choices, though not entirely irreversible, create lasting legacies” (pp. 10–11). Here, the reader cannot determine whether “collective action in markets” refers to any mode of organizing within the market context or, more specifically, the formation of new certification initiatives, or perhaps coordination between various certification initiatives within a sector. Maybe the passage refers to all three. I reordered the concepts to digest the causal argument. Does Auld mean to say that in early stages of program development, the degree of market demand influences initiatives’ choices regarding collective action in markets, and that these choices have lasting legacies? If so, why not present in the order of the causal logic?
In another example, Auld writes that it is insufficient to focus on “incentives to get participants involved and preventing them from shirking their responsibilities to implement fails to recognize that the institutions themselves may be the locus of controversy” (pp. 219–20). But it is not clear to whom “participants” and “institutions” refers or what it means to “get involved” or “shirk responsibilities.” This critique is one of presentation and not substance, however. The author’s arguments of causation are well substantiated, the key concepts are fleshed out over the course of the book, and ultimately the reader is able to understand and appreciate the important contributions.
Constructing Private Governance is essential literature for scholars of voluntary ethical regulation and students interested in social and environmental certification as a form of global governance. Practitioners, too, will find the cross-sector insights invaluable as they navigate the trade-offs and challenges of different approaches to voluntary regulation. By masterfully combining hypotheses from extant literature with empirical analysis, this book makes compelling and often counterintuitive arguments that move the conversation about private regulatory governance forward in new and important ways.
