This contribution is a reaction to the striking fact that the political aspect of CSR has remained largely hidden in most of the scientific and practice-oriented management literature. This work intends to illuminate the political dimension of CSR in that the changing stance of the European Commission toward CSR between 2001 and 2006 is analyzed and interpreted as a result of political processes within an “issue arena”. For this case study written documents from the most important actors are used (EU Commission, EU Parliament, the Council, advocacy groups and lobbies for industry and civil society CSR platforms) as well as interviews with high ranking representatives of these institutions (conducted in the spring of 2008).

Using several case studies and data from the Economic Freedom of the World annual report and from the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, we estimate the effect of human rights abuses on economic liberalization. The data suggest that human rights abuses reduce rather than accelerate the pace of economic liberalization.

In the 1990s, there was a lot of concern in studies of post-communism about communist-era managers stalling institutional reforms due to their ability to gain long-term advantages through institutional capture. By influencing market governance rules (corporate governance, bankruptcy, competition laws), managers could protect and amplify initial economic gains from liberalization, entrenching economic inequality. Yet in the 2000s, even the laggards of transition have implemented significant market governance reforms and have enjoyed rapid economic growth. Moreover, business perceptions of state capture (from BEEPS) have dropped substantially. The paper examines this surprising turnaround with evidence from the Romanian case. I argue that contrary to expectations, business interests have failed to capture market governance institutions. In spite of benefiting from shady privatization deals and other advantages based on political connections, the new Romanian entrepreneurs were not threatened by sophisticated market governance laws. This argument based on the preferences of business actors is a necessary addition to explanations of institutional reforms that rely on international conditionality or on economic crisis.

In this article we examine how Chinese local officials impact rural business environment and market development since the late 1990s. If their power is not effectively checked by village elections, local political elite are able to manipulate reform policies in a way to serve their economic and political interests at the cost of villagers' interests. In other words, local officials selectively implement reform policies not only to maximize economic rents available for extraction but also to minimize the risk that may challenge their rent-seeking capacity in the countryside. We draw on a survey data collected by the authors from rural China in 2003 and 2004 to test our hypothesis on the relationship between political control exercised by local officials over village elections and rural business environment & market development. Our analysis shows that if a local government can keep a village elections under its control, then local officials would charge more license application fees from self-employment business owners, put village land re-allocation process under government administrative control, restrict peasants from founding their own professional associations. Local officials' self-serving strategy inevitably deteriorates rural business & market environment and bodes an incomplete market-oriented reform for reformists in the central government.

The globalization of production and finance is responsible for much of the variation in political contestation over exchange rates since the end of Bretton Woods. On the one hand, globalization increases the salience of the policy decisions that affect exchange rates, as more firms and their workers engage more in international trade and compete more against imports. On the other hand, globalization offers firms a myriad of opportunities to manage their exchange rate risk, through operational and financial hedging. But hedging is available to only certain types of economic actors and in certain situations of exchange rate risk. In this way, globalization has redrawn traditional political cleavages on exchange rates. This argument is tested with an original survey of US firms, labor unions, and trade associations on their preferences and political activity on exchange rate policy.

This introduction to the special issue combines a review of the existing literature about the causes and consequences of private regulation in the global economy with a preview of the articles in this issue. To organize this (p)review, I introduce a conceptual model “beyond supply and demand,” which distinguishes three major subsets of stakeholders of global private regulation, which may (but need not) overlap: the political actors who call for private regulation, the rule-makers who provide such governance for the global economy, and what I call the “targets” of the private regulations, who are supposed to behave according to these private rules. I then highlight the three core questions addressed by the contributions to the special issue: (1) How do private bodies attain regulatory authority; why do private regulators provide governance; and why do the targets of the rules comply? (2) Who governs the global economy through private regulations? And (3) what are the effects of private regulation, and how does the rise of private regulation affect public regulatory authority and capacity?

In this research we hypothesize that aggregate PAC behavior is conditional in nature. PACs in a specific issue sector donate more to a certain political party's candidates the more that political party controls the legislature. However, the more active the legislature is on a specific set of issues the more people/groups/PACs are mobilized in response to the issue. Thus, a conditional relationship emerges where aggregate PAC donations to a political party are a function of party control, agenda activity, and an interaction of the two. We test this conditional theory using data from the Institute on Money in State Politics database on PAC donations to state legislative candidates divided into issue sectors. Our results provide support for our hypotheses that aggregate PAC donations to a political party's candidates are conditional on the level of agenda activity on the issues that concern the PACs.

This paper seeks to explain the success of two NGOs in creating standards for calculating and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the level of an entire company. These emissions accounting standards, called the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, have been widely adopted by multinational firms, emissions reporting registries, and even an emissions trading scheme. The paper traces the widespread adoption of the standards, and then offers an explanation for this successful instance of private regulation. It presents a supply and demand model of private entrepreneurial authority—where private actors project authority without delegation by states. The two NGOs were successful rule-makers because they were able meet a demand for three benefits to potential users of the standard: reduced transaction costs, first-mover advantage, and an opportunity to burnish their reputation as environmental leaders. The paper also explains the supply of private authority—that is, why we see entrepreneurial authority rather than delegation by states. The disagreement among developed countries on the appropriate role for emissions trading in the climate regime delayed action on developing firm-level accounting methodologies. Moreover, the relative weakness of the focal institution in the climate regime—the climate change Secretariat—meant that there was no obvious international organization to take up the task of creating new measurement tools.

The political economy of trade literature argues that the policy of compensating those who lose from trade is an important component of maintaining public support for free-trade, a linkage known as the compensation hypothesis or embedded liberalism thesis. This article tests the causal mechanisms underlying the compensation hypothesis by examining support for trade-related compensation using survey data from the United States. Expectations about the effects of trade strongly predict support for trade-related unemployment insurance, with those who expect to lose more likely to support and those who expect to gain more like to oppose, but has no influence on support for general unemployment insurance despite previous research suggesting it should.

While the literature on political action committees' (PACs) contributions to congressional campaigns is substantial, one key variable has been missing: the ideology of the PAC. Such a measure is needed to evaluate a normatively important yet unanswered question: to what extent do PACs give to candidates with whom they agree ideologically, as opposed to candidates they may want to influence after the election? This study shows that many interest groups' preferences for an electoral strategy or an access strategy can be predicted by their left-right ideology and their level of ideological extremism. The analysis finds that more ideologically extreme groups and more liberal groups spend more money on PAC contributions relative to lobbying. Further, groups' underlying left-right ideology is also highly predictive of their allocation of PAC contributions between the two parties—even controlling for group type.

Processes of regional trade integration may have an important impact on firms' strategies and forms of organization. This article provides an empirical case study of the impact of regional trade integration in the Andean Pact in the 1990s on the strategies and organization of British American Tobacco (BAT), using internal tobacco industry documents. BAT conducted an integrated strategy by lobbying on tax and tariff rates and intellectual property regulations, whilst simultaneously adapting its market strategies and attempting to modify its internal organization. The company incorporated substantial sales in illicit markets into its strategy, and launched new legal export operations within the region, in part to assert ownership over contested trademarks. It attempted to significantly modify its internal organization by better integrating its national operating companies on a regional basis, but was only partially successful in this due to resistance from its powerful Brazilian subsidiary. Changes in intellectual property rules also intensified competition between BAT and its main competitor, Philip Morris, culminating in a legal dispute between the two firms and leading BAT to develop a more coherent strategy on trademark ownership. These findings raise implications for understanding, and regulating, tobacco industry activities worldwide.

An increasing number of firms are engaging in social and environmental initiatives beyond their core business activities. While much has been written about why business should spend resources on social and environmental causes, relatively few studies have systematically addressed the question of why certain companies actually do engage in such activities. A notable exception is literature on the ‘business case’ for corporate social responsibility, which argues that good social and environmental performance will positively affect a company's financial results. The evidence on this link, however, is mixed. Even if there is an economic rationale, it is not clear why some companies engage in social activities while others do not. And, why do many more companies today ‘see’ the business case than in the past? This paper maps out the theoretical terrain exploring this question and categorizes the various existing explanations for corporate social engagement.

Real exchange rate movements are robustly related to the rise and fall of trade protectionism. I demonstrate this by presenting a theoretical model that incorporates the real exchange rate into a standard factor proportions model of trade policy preferences. The model demonstrates why some firms' trade policy preferences, and thus total demands for protectionism, change in response to real exchange rate movements. I evaluate the model with data on antidumping investigations in six industrialized countries between the late 1970s and 2004. The exercise suggests that the real exchange rate hypothesis offers a more compelling explanation for protectionist waves than the business cycle hypothesis.

Private regulation often entails competition among multiple rule-makers, but private rules and regulators do not always compete. For substantial parts of the global economy, a single private body (per issue) is recognized as the focal point for global rule-making. The selection of the institutional setting here effectively takes place prior to drawing up the specific rules, with important consequences for the politics of regulating global markets. In this paper, I develop a theoretical explanation for how a private transnational organization may attain such preeminence—how it can become the focal point for rule-making—in its area of expertise. I emphasize the transnational body's capacity to pursue its organizational self-interest, as well as timing and sequence. I then examine empirically a particularly important body of this kind, which today is essentially uncontested as the focal point for private regulation in its area, even though its standards often have substantial distributive implications: the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). I analyze the persistence and changes in the IEC's formal rules or procedures and informal norms, as well as the broadening scope of its regulatory authority and membership over more than a century.

Recent research has shown that alliances between policy makers and investors can be very effective in enhancing investment and growth. Drawing on the case of Egypt, this paper asks where such growth alliances come from, how they evolve over time, what their key features are, how they work, in what circumstances they do good rather than harm, and whether they can be constructed for policy purposes.

The paper examines the use of free trade agreements (FTAs) by Japanese firms. The FTAs analyzed include Japan's FTAs with Mexico, Malaysia and Chile. Based on 1,688 responses to a questionnaire survey conducted in 2008, the study finds that the utilization rate of FTAs ranges between 32.9% (Japan-Mexico FTA) and 12.2% (Japan-Malaysia FTA). The survey results and the statistical analysis of the determinants of the use of FTAs reveal obstacles to using FTAs that include difficulty in obtaining the certificate of origin that is required to use the FTA, lack of knowledge of FTAs, and the small FTA tariff preference that is the difference between the most-favored-nation (MFN) and FTA tariff rates.

This paper investigates the creation and consequences of private regulation in global food governance. It points to the power to govern and the authority to govern as the two crucial conditions for the emergence and diffusion of private food regulation. More specifically, the paper argues that the power to govern is a function of the structural power of agrifood corporations, particularly retail food corporations in our case. The authority to govern is a function of the perceived legitimacy of retail food corporations as political actors. By linking power and authority to the material and ideational structures existing in the global political economy of food, this paper analyses the processes that serve to create, maintain and reproduce private regulation in food governance. With its analysis, the paper aims to contribute to the theoretical and empirical debates on private authority, private regulation and the challenges for sustainability in the global food system.

Private regulation has become a highly debated phenomenon. Previous research has focused mostly on the effectiveness, legitimacy, and governance structure of private regulators at the global level. Few existing analyses have focused on private regulation at the European level, where only questions of interest representation have attracted attention. Analyses of the contribution of private regulation to the process of European legal integration, in particular, are lacking. We seek to fill this gap. From private rules for product safety and for financial markets, such as the Single Euro Payments Area standards, to private rules governing the professions, we observe that private regulation has facilitated and accelerated European legal integration. We argue that in some cases this effect was anticipated, especially by the European Commission, and in those cases the intended effect on European legal integration at least partly explains the rise of private regulation. I other cases, it was an incidental by-product of attempts to address market failures or achieve network legitimacy. In the conclusion, we turn to questions of accountability and legitimacy raised by the increasing importance of private regulators in the Common Market of the EU. Although the EU lacks a body of rules that imposes democratic controls on private regulators, we identify components of European law that can be used as control mechanisms.

Systems for certifying sustainable resource use and decent labor conditions have become prominent modes of private regulation at the transnational level. But serious questions remain about how these global standards are put into practice in particular places, especially in developing countries. Drawing on fieldwork in Indonesia, this paper examines the growth of certification of sustainable forestry (e.g., through the Forest Stewardship Council) and certification of decent labor conditions in factories (e.g., through Social Accountability International). Based on the controversy that surrounded both sweatshops and deforestation in Indonesia, and the export dependence of both the apparel/footwear and forest products sectors, these would appear to be prime candidates for the application of certification. Yet in both sectors, the growth of multi-stakeholder certification has been limited. Furthermore, private regulation in Indonesia has taken somewhat divergent paths in these two sectors, which shapes certification's significance at the point of production. The paper examines how the socio-legal context of certification, the character of supply chain relationships, and possible differences in the politics of labor and the environment can help to explain these patterns and contribute to a richer sense of private regulation's “on the ground” manifestations.