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Summary. -Coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries. The global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation, new consumption patterns, and evolving corporate strategies. From a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements, power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations. A relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal, unstable, and unequal. Through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis, this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances. Ó

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In this article we review the evolution and current status of Global Value Chain (GVC) governance theory and take some initial steps toward a broader theory of governance through an exercise in 'modular theory-building.' We focus on two GVC governance theories to which we previously contributed: a theory of linking and a theory of conventions. The modular framework we propose is built on three scalar dimensions: (1) a micro leveldeterminants and dynamics of exchange at individual value chain nodes; (2) a meso levelhow and to what extent these linkage characteristics 'travel' upand down-stream in the value chain; and (3) a macro levellooking at 'overall' GVC governance. Given space limitations, we focus only on the issue of 'polarity' in governance at the macro level, distinguishing between unipolar, bipolar and multipolar governance forms. While we leave a more ambitious analysis of how overall GVC governance is mutually constituted by micro/meso factors and broader institutional, regulatory and societal processes to future work, we provide an initial framework to which this work could be linked. Our ultimate purpose is to spur future efforts that seek to use and refine additional theories, to connect theories together better or in different modular configurations, and to incorporate elements at the macro level that reflect the changing constellation of key actors in GVC governancethe increasing influence of, for example, NGOs, taste and standard makers, and social movements in GVC governance.

Many policy prescriptions emphasise poverty reduction through closer integration of poor people or areas with global markets. Global value chain (GVC) studies reveal how firms and farms in developing countries are upgraded by being integrated in global markets, but few explicitly document the impact on poverty, gender and the environment, or conversely, how value chain restructuring is in turn mediated by local history, social relations and environmental factors. This article develops a conceptual framework that can help overcome the shortcomings in ‘standalone’ value‐chain, livelihood and environmental analyses by integrating the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ aspects of value chains that together affect poverty and sustainability.