GEP Falculty Search: Nov. 18, 2008

The Global Environmental Politics program is interviewing candidates for faculty positions, and we have a roll to play!

The next talk is tomorrow morning, Tues, Nov 18, from 10:45-12:15 in MGC 245.
The candidate is Graeme Auld, of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Auld's talk will be: "Reversal of Fortune: How Early Decisions can Alter the Logic of Market-Based Authority" (with a focus on forest protection).

We should all be there to hear about Auld's work. The talk should be interesting AND we have a great opportunity, as students in the program, to have some input on who will be chosen as instructors for our program. I hope you all will find the time to be there tomorrow, and take part in the discussion with Graeme Auld.

Below is Auld's research statement;

Institutional Development: Examining the origins of private environmental and social governance programs

In a wide range of economic sectors, non-state actors are acquiring governance roles and responsibilities conventionally held by governments. Examples abound. Private conservation organizations have helped implement and enforce park protection policies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Transnational corporations now often use private arbitration, rather than national courts, as a venue for dispute resolution. As well, through their associations, these and other companies are offering codes of conduct as a means to govern an array of company and industry-wide activities. Further still, social and environmental organizations, partnering with businesses, have created private certification programs to regulate economic activities in sectors including coffee, tourism, mining, fisheries, and forestry.

These examples are meant to illustrate an extant shift from a state-centric to a multi-centric system of global governance and to show how governance arrangements writ large are currently in flux. Examining and understanding these emerging models – including where they come from and how they develop and change – is therefore important since their form and content are likely to influence the governance arrangements that persist into the future. To do this, a theory delineating how and why new governance arrangements emerge, why they come in varying forms, and what drives and constrains the changes they undergo once they are established is needed. Although a growing body of work is addressing these and related questions, in a number of ways (which I discuss below) my contribution will be unique.

Codes of conduct and private certification programs serve as the research focal point. For the remainder of this proposal, they are both considered private governance arrangements. They do, however, vary markedly. They vary in what they regulate, how they regulate, how they originate and when, and what they hope to accomplish. This research will examine two facets of the variation: (1) a binary "emerge" – "not-emerge" variation, and (2) a configurational variation measured by what the programs seek to regulate, who is regulated, and who has a stake in governance decision-making. These will permit examining three theoretical questions: (1) where governance innovation comes from, (2) whether, and if yes, how do early decisions made by private governance programs and the ideas these different actions embody form paths constraining future decisions and (3) through what processes are governance innovations generalized across issue areas.