Fair Trade and Global Civil Society

This thesis examines the Fair Trade movement as an international response of civil society to improve basic labor rights for producers. It explains the development of the Fair Trade movement and gives an overview of the organizations that currently comprise the movement. It also highlights some of the contemporary challenges the movement faces. The paper then provides a review of the literature written on global civil society insomuch as it is relevant to the Fair Trade movement. From this information, the paper draws conclusions about the success of the movement achieving its goals in light of its challenges. The paper concludes that the movement has admirable goals, but lacks good implementations and suffers from both undemocratic practice and inadequate representation. Lastly, it suggests policy changes to improve the effectiveness of the movement