Assembling an experimentalist regime: Transnational governance interactions in the forest sector

Abstract

Transnational governance initiatives increasingly face the problem of regime complexity in which a proliferation of regulatory schemes operate in the same policy domain, supported by varying combinations of public and private actors. The literature suggests that such regime complexity can lead to forum shopping and other self‐interested strategies, which undermine the effectiveness of transnational regulation. Based on the design principles of experimentalist governance, this paper identifies a variety of pathways and mechanisms, which promote productive interactions in regime complexes. We use the case of the EU's Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, interacting with private certification schemes and public legal timber regulations, including those of third countries such as the US and China, to demonstrate how an increasingly comprehensive transnational regime can be assembled by linking together distinct components of a regime complex. We argue that it is the experimentalist features of this initiative and its regulatory interactions, which accommodate local diversity and foster recursive learning from decentralized implementation experience, that make it possible to build up a flexible and adaptive transnational governance regime from an assemblage of interconnected pieces, even in situations where interests diverge and no hegemon can impose its own will.

Towards State Hegemony Over Agricultural Certification: From Voluntary Private to Mandatory State Regimes on Palm Oil in Indonesia

“…These results show that pro ISPO and pro RSPO actors formally 'support' each other to shape their informal interests, that is contributed to the complex meta governance system. This phenomenon would lead the RSPO to assert their legitimacy over that of the ISPO in the future, which is in line with the argumentation by Overdevest & Zeitlin (2012), that private certification will take back its legitimacy due to the trend from failed public governance to private experimentalism. In the end, the voluntary and the compulsory systems collaborate to attract global initiatives, shaping state and private interests.…”

The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change

“…Going one step further, IOs could promote experimentation: (34) supporting different types of transnational schemes, standards, and programs, assessing their results, promoting peer review, diffusing knowledge about them, and helping to replicate or scale up transferable innovations. The EU and some states engage in experimentalist governance, but transnational experimentation is rarely pursued in a structured way (Overdevest and Zeitlin, 2011;Sabel and Zeitlin, 2010;.…”

The Effectiveness of Transnational Non-State Governance: The Role of Domestic Regulations and Compliance Assessment in Practice

“…2011). The growing literature on transnational business governance interactions shows that interactions between state and private actors are key to the dynamics of governance fields, national uptake of transnational private programs, and their on-the-ground impact, as this paper will also argue (Cashore et al 2004;Eberlein et al 2012;Gulbrandsen 2010Gulbrandsen , 2012Overdevest/ Zeitlin 2012). address is the temporal dynamics of the interactions between transnational standards and domestic institutions and regulations. Domestic regulations change and may have a different impact on certification over time.…”

“…Several recent studies of the interactions between governance initiatives and various actors point out the importance of such interactions, but these have focused mainly on transnational standard-setting and domestic responses and less on standard implementation (Overdevest/Zeitlin 2012;Gulbrandsen 2012). More research is needed if we are to understand local dynamics.…”