Transnational Private Governance and its Limits

'Graz and Nölke have brought together a variety of perspectives on a whole sector of transnational arrangements that do not directly involve states and which are designed to regulate activities or to negotiate consensus on practices across national borders at both regional and international levels. They have derived from these different perspectives on particular cases some general propositions about the broader significance of these arrangements for world order. Their book raises important questions concerning the power relations that these arrangements reinforce. Do they bias outcomes in favour of the more powerful corporate entities? Do they privilege technocratic professionalism? Do they escape democratic accountability? Graz and Nölke are to be congratulated for bringing this complex phenomenon, which has sometimes been seen as a benign adjunct to globalizing neoliberalism, into a focus for critical evaluation.' - Robert W. Cox, York University, Canada

'This is an important contribution to an expanding literature. The book makes an especially clear argument about the severe limits to the democratic accountability of private governance despite the frequent protestations about the openness of many stakeholder processes.' - Craig N. Murphy, Wellesley College, USA

'As the level and scope of cross-border integration increase, awkward questions arise concerning the appropriate nature and form of governance for this changing world of ours. Private actors have often filled the breach opened by the simultaneous erosion of state capacity to govern and a failure of public authorities to achieve adequate cross-border pooling of their 'sovereignty' to keep pace with cross-border activity of increasing complexity. Building on an already prodigious literature dating from the early 1990s on private actors in global governance, this fine study takes a fresh, insightful and, above all, critical look (in the best sense of the term) at the dilemmas which democratic policy-making processes face in such a context. Questions once raised by Susan Strange or Benjamin J. Cohen, such as "who governs?" and "in whose interest?" receive fresh and innovative analysis from Graz and Noelke and their contributors. Broadening the coverage of existing studies and deepening our understanding, this is a serious effort to understand better where and how private power and authority can and should fit in the governance of a transnational world which nonetheless aspires to a strong public domain under a democratic order. This study should inspire scholars and policy-makers alike to think more deeply and eschew the path of least resistance when it comes to resolving our problems of governance in a globalising world.' - Geoffrey R.D. Underhill, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands