Regulatory politics and hybrid governance: the case of Brazil’s Amazon Soy Moratorium

This paper analyses the unique hybrid governance of Brazil’s Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM) in regulating soybean production in the Amazon, where private actors have created a state-like ban on commodity production to reduce deforestation that goes beyond national law. Despite existing research regarding impact assessment, the study aims to fill knowledge gaps in explaining the ASM’s alliance-building processes, its longstanding maintenance, and its potential for regulatory replicability. Informed by the application of the Baptist and Bootlegger political economic theory of regulation and empirical data from qualitative interviews and document analysis, we provide an actor-centered explanation of the design, adoption, and maintenance of the ASM over a 19-year timeframe. Our results show how NGOs and businesses had opposite motivations and negotiated their roles to form a successful strategic alliance, reinforced by the inclusion of third parties (e.g., technical and governmental actors) to assist in its monitoring and transparency. Developed as an exclusive private market regulation, the ASM agreement, however, relies on a policy mix: private and public actors play a role in implementation, which includes assisting and relying on existing public policies, instruments, and official data. This policy mix was necessary for the ASM’s noteworthy hybrid and long-term governance. Its successful formation in 2006 was enabled by factors including an economic crisis, foreign pressure linked with national enforcement failure, and, most importantly, the Amazon scope. Our analysis shows who gains or loses from the regulatory design. Furthermore, we shed light on the biggest regulatory spillover, to the Cerrado, where the failed attempt at replicability emphasizes the regulatory uniqueness of the ASM. The study concludes with a discussion of what will help or hinder the ASM’s longevity, providing lessons for similar regulatory mechanisms on forest-risk agricultural production, such as EU’s recent Regulation on Deforestation-free Products.