Autonomy and Private Authority

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-78
Keyword(s):  
Private Authority

Rethinking Private Authority

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Green Building ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Treaty Implementation

This book examines the role of nonstate actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. It identifies two distinct forms of private authority—one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, the book shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. The book traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. It persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for the book's arguments. The book demonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems.

A Substantive Theory of Transnational Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Differential Performance

Social scientists have theorized the rise of transnational private authority, but knowledge about its consequences remains sparse and fragmented. This chapter builds from a critique of “empty spaces” imagery in several leading paradigms to a new theory of transnational governance. Rules and assurances are increasingly flowing through global production networks, but these flows are channeled and reconfigured by domestic governance in a variety of ways. Abstracting from the case studies in this book, a series of theoretical propositions specify the likely outcomes of private regulation, the influence of domestic governance, the special significance of territory and rights, and several ways in which the content of rules shapes their implementation. As such, this theory proposes an explanation for differences across places, fields, and issues, including the differential performance of labor and environmental standards.

scholarly journals The Governance of Transnational Environmental Harm: Addressing New Modes of Accountability/Responsibility

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mason
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Introductory Paper

Transboundary and global environmental harm present substantial challenges to state-centered (territorial) modalities of accountability and responsibility. The globalization of environmental degradation has triggered regulatory responses at various jurisdictional scales. These governance efforts, featuring various articulations of state and/or private authority, have struggled to address so-called “accountability deficits” in global environmental politics. Yet, it has also become clear that accountability and responsibility norms forged in domestic regulatory contexts cannot simply be transposed across borders. This special issue explores various conceptual perspectives on accountability and responsibility for transnational harm, and examines their application to different actor groups and environmental governance regimes. This introductory paper provides an overview of the major theoretical positions and examines some of the analytical challenges raised by the transnational (re)scaling of accountability and responsibility norms.

A Theory of Private Authority

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Contemporary Politics

This chapter describes a theory of private authority, based on the notion of supply and demand, that explains when private authority emerges and why, and whether it is delegated or entrepreneurial. A theory of private authority contributes to larger discussions about institutional design and provides new insights into the mechanisms through which global cooperation might occur. The chapter first explains what authority is and why people obey it. It then defines private authority and examines its major characteristics, including why actors choose to consent to privately created rules. It argues that in contemporary politics expertise is a key engine for legitimacy and thus for consent, because it allows actors to provide benefits to others. The chapter proceeds by exploring delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority. Finally, it develops expectations about when private authority emerges in world politics—and what type of authority will likely develop.

scholarly journals The Moral Paradox of Adverse Possession: Sovereignty and Revolution in Property Law

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Katz
Keyword(s):  
Public Authority ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Personal Virtue ◽  
Adverse Possession

On what grounds can we justify the transformation of squatters into owners? To understand the moral significance of adverse possession, the author proposes an analogy. Much of the moral analysis of adverse possession has proceeded on the basis that adverse possessors are land thieves. The author first explains why the analogy of adverse possessor to land thief is misleading. Then, she argues that there is a much closer analogy between adverse possession and revolution or, more precisely, a bloodless coup d’état. The recognition of the adverse possessor’s (private) authority solves the moral problem created by an agendaless object just as the recognition of the existing government’s (public) authority, whatever its origin, solves the moral problem of a stateless people. The morality of adverse possession, seen this way, does not turn on any particularized evaluation of the squatter’s deserts or her uses of the land. The author thus does not propose that adverse possession is justified in the same way that some argue a conscientious revolutionary is justified in resisting an oppressive or otherwise unjust sovereign. Rather, the morality of adverse possession is found where we might least expect it: in its positivist strategy of ratifying the claims to authority of a squatter without regard to the substantive merits of her agenda or her personal virtue.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document