Details
With the globalisation of markets, the phenomenon of market failure has also been globalised. Against the backdrop of the territoriality of nation state jurisdictions and the slow progress of international law based on the principle of sovereignty this poses a serious challenge. However while the legal infrastructure of globalised markets has a firm basis in formal national and international law, the side effects of economic transactions on public goods such as the environment, human health and consumer interests often escape state-based regulation.
Therefore, attention is drawn to the potential of self-regulation by transnational industry. While hypotheses abound which try to grasp this phenomenon in conceptual terms, both empirical and legal research is still underdeveloped. This volume helps to fill this gap, in two ways: firstly by reconstructing self-regulatory settings such as multinational corporations, transnational production networks and industry-NGO partnerships in terms of organisation, problem-solving and legitimation, and secondly, by linking their empirical findings to formal law by examining how legal concepts are reflected in self-regulation, how the law builds on self-regulatory solutions, and how it helps to establish favorable conditions for private governance.
Olaf Dilling is a trained lawyer and currently a research associate at the Collaborative Research Center 'Transformations of the State' at Bremen University.
Martin Herberg is senior research fellow at the Collaborative Research Center 'Transformations of the State', Bremen University. He is a trained sociologist.
Gerd Winter is Professor of Public Law and the Sociology of Law at the University of Bremen Department of Law. He directs the Research Center for European Environmental Law as well as a section of the Collaborative Research Center 'Transformations of the State' at the same university.
...a timely, thought-provoking collection that covers a diverse range of topical and problematic subject areas. The editors and authors clearly believe that official and private regulation can work in tandem, enhancing the overall impact of the regulatory aims and present compelling empirical and theoretical evidence to support this belief. It would be an excellent addition to any library seeking to expand not just its regulation and governance titles, but also its international economic, environmental and socio-legal titles.
Fiona Marshall
The Law and Politics Book Review
Vol 19 No 3, March 2009
...a range of fascinating theoretical,doctrinal and empirical insights into the nature of the self-regulatory settings for multinational corporations and transnational economic networks, as well conceptualising the legal significance of self-regulatory arrangements and the conditions under which private governance may flourish...highly recommended to environmental law students, scholars and policy-makers seeking a more sophisticated understanding of the complex and dynamic shifts in national and transnational governance that have increasingly diluted (but certainly not rendered irrelevant) the role of the state and its formal law-making processes. The wealth of case studies and meticulous empirical evidence, combined with high theory, make for a very plausible analysis of one of the most significant trends in environmental and economic governance...a worthwhile addition to nearly any environmental law library.
Benjamin J Richardson
Journal of Environmental Law
Vol 21, No 1, 2009
The text leaves the reader with a well-balanced and structured approach to how businesses should govern themselves and act responsibly in the marketplace; the case studies act as a useful practical tool to reason the law against; and the text is a must-read for any academic or postgraduate student interested in how businesses operate and how to act reponsibly in the marketplace in order to avoid market failure.
Andrew James Perkins, (Gray's Inn), Swansea University
International Trade Law and Regulation
Volume 15, Issue 5 (2009)
Interdisciplinary in its inception and empirical in its approach, the volume draws primarily from sociology, law, and political science to provide a through-provoking and optimistic story about the emergent potential for self-governance and private ordering to produce systems of rules and norms that increasingly—and explicitly—regulate public goods, in the public interest. The book's value is its explicitly interdisciplinary focus on empirical and legal accounts, attempting to ground governance theory in specific examples. As such, it should have wide appeal.
Laura Spitz
Law and Society Review
Volume 44, Issue 2
