Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance

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Rethinking Private Authority examines the role of non-state actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. Jessica Green 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, Green 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. Green 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. She 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 her arguments. Groundbreaking in scope, Rethinking Private Authority 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

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Winner of the 2015 Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize, Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics Section of the American Political Science Association Winner of the 2014-2015 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies Association Winner of the 2015 Levine Prize, International Political Science Association's Research Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government "In this pioneering work, Green explores how governmental and private actors can work together to institute regulations to address global environmental problems... [I]ts conclusions have implications for the entire field of international relations. The work is carefully argued, clearly written, and supported by an extensive bibliography."--Choice "The author has to be acclaimed for her ability to wade through hundreds if not thousands of documents, verify their authenticity and reach conclusions on the variety of measures taken by the private sector in cooperation with governments, international organisations or independently, to discharge their responsibility toward containing emissions."--Madras Sivaraman, International Journal of Environmental Studies "[Green] offer[s] novel and insightful empirical descriptions of the operation of private authority in contemporary global governance."--Elizabeth Acorn, Global Law Books "Offer[s] a persuasive framework for identifying and analyzing private authority at the international level. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated here by extended empirical studies."--Kathryn Hochstetler, Perspectives on Politics

Author Bio

Jessica F. Green is assistant professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University. She is the coeditor of "The Politics of Participation in Sustainable Development Governance" and "Reforming International Environmental Governance".