Rethinking Transnational Governance: Private Rules, Public Law, and Possibilities for Reform

This presentation will focus on the normative implications of Bartley's research on transnational private regulation. For the past two decades, transnational governance has mostly meant voluntary subscription to privately developed global standards. But as the limits of this approach have become clearer, new models have emerged that seek in various ways to harden soft commitments. In the governance of land and labor, we can see several emerging approaches, including a new transnational timber legality regime and a turn toward binding agreements and domestic law in pursuit of decent work in the global factory. The presentation will identify the processes behind these reforms and argue for a style of "place-conscious" transnational governance that re-centers the state while still using global production networks as infrastructures for enforcement