Private Governance and Public Authority: Regulating Sustainability in a Global Economy by Stefan Renckens

Abstract

Private Governance and Public Authority by Stefan Renckens is a detailed account of European Union (EU) regulation of private sustainability standards in different sectors. It is a valuable book that gives insight into the interplay between public and private regulation. Private sustainability standards are governance initiatives by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or businesses, setting voluntary standards for sustainable conduct by firms. Often external auditors will assess compliance with the standard, after which producers can put the standard’s label on the product. These standards are sometimes unregulated, and at other times, governments set procedural or substantive requirements for standards in particular sectors. The variation in government intervention is what this book aims to explain. The case studies in the book address organic agriculture, biofuels, fair trade, and fisheries. Private sustainability standards can be completely unregulated. An actor can simply set a standard, certify producers that live up to this standard, and label the products as sustainable. It is up to the consumer to determine whether to trust this standard. Though standards could be a useful tool to reduce information asymmetries and therefore make a market in sustainable products possible, this usefulness can be undermined by a lack of substance of and trust in these standards. In addition, a proliferation of standards leads to confusion on the side of consumers and limits market access for producers, who might have to comply with many different standards. This all limits the potential positive benefits private standards can have. These problems could be solved by government intervention. Governments could verify the credibility of these standards or regulate private standards to facilitate market access. Renckens addresses the interesting and relevant question of when governments get involved. The book presents two hypotheses: that governments intervene when it is in the interest of domestic producers and intervene when the private governance market is too fragmented. Renckens distinguishes two types of government intervention. The first is the creation of substantive rules, for example, with respect to the production process or requiring that a standard be communicated via a product label. The second type of intervention is procedural rules. These are rules on the