The power of big box retail in global environmental governance: Bringing commodity chains back into IR

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 145-160

  Dauvergne, Peter ^a   Lister, Jane ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Forest governance; Global commodity chains; Multinational corporations

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955361366     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0305829810371018     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Susan Strange, 'Big Business and the State', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 20, no. 2 (1991): 245-50, 245
2. Lorraine Eden, 'Bringing the Firm Back In: Multinationals in International Political Economy', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 20, no. 2 (1991): 197-224.
3. Space restrictions prevent a detailed listing of this literature. Two journals, however, provide many excellent examples: Global Governance (founded in 1995) and Global Environmental Politics (founded in 2001).
4. One of the most influential books here has been Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
5. Steven Bernstein, Michele Betsill, Matthew Hoffmann and Matthew Paterson, 'A Tale of Two Copenhagens: Carbon Markets and Climate Governance', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 1 (2010).
6. Robert Falkner, 'Private Environmental Governance and International Relations: Exploring the Links', in Global Environmental Governance for the Twenty-First Century: Theoretical Approaches and Normative Considerations, eds David Humphreys, Matthew Paterson and Lloyd Pettiford, special issue of Global Environmental Politics 3, no. 2 (2003): 72-87.
7. See the Wal-Mart announcement at: http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability/9660.aspx.
8. See www.forestdisclosure.com; and Steven J. Davis and Ken Caldeira, 'Consumption-based Accounting of CO2 Emissions', Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, published online before print, 8 March 2010.
9. In IR, Hopkins and Wallerstein were the first to use the concept of 'commodity chain' in this way. See Terence Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein, 'Patterns of Development of the Modern World-System', Review 1, no. 2 (1977): 111-45
10. Terence Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein, 'Commodity Chains in the World Economy Prior to 1800', Review 10, no. 1 (1986): 157-70.
11. For example, see James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds, Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
12. Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
13. Linda Weiss, The Myth of the Powerless State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998)
14. More recently, Georg Sørensen, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
15. Strange, The Retreat of the State, 4.
16. Weiss, The Myth of the Powerless State, 185.
17. Upgrading refers to firms acquiring technological capabilities and market ties to enable them to become more competitive and move into higher-value activities.
18. Shankar Ganesan, Morris George, Sandy Jap, Robert W. Palmatier and Barton Weitz, 'Supply Chain Management and Retailer Performance: Emerging Trends, Issues, and Implications for Research and Practice', Journal of Retailing 85, no. 1 (2009): 84-94.
19. A major contribution to the stream of business research examining buyer- versus seller-driven commodity chains was Gary Gereffi's chapter, 'The Organization of Buyer-driven Global Commodity Chains: How U.S. Retailers Shape Overseas Production Networks', in a book he edited with Miguel Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994).
20. Other examples from this literature are Gary Gereffi, John Humphrey and Timothy Sturgeon, 'The Governance of Global Value Chains', Review of International Political Economy 12, no. 1 (2005): 78-104
21. Jennifer Bair, 'Global Capitalism and Commodity Chains: Looking Back, Going Forward', Competition & Change 9, no. 2 (2005): 153-80
22. Jennifer Bair, ed., Frontiers of Commodity Chain Research (San Francisco: Stanford University Press, 2009).
23. A few examples are Graeme Auld, Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore, 'The New Corporate Social Responsibility', Annual Review of Environment and Resources 33 (November 2008): 413-35
24. Steven Bernstein, 'Legitimacy in Intergovernmental and Non-state Global Governance', Review of International Political Economy (2010 forthcoming)
25. Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore, 'Can Non-state Global Governance Be Legitimate? An Analytical Framework', Regulation & Governance 1, no. 4 (2007): 347-71
26. Peter Newell, 'The Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance', Review of International Studies 34, no. 3 (2008): 507-29
27. Matthew Paterson, 'Global Governance for Sustainable Capitalism? The Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance', in Governing Sustainability, eds Neil Adger and Andrew Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
28. Doris Fuchs, Business Power in Global Governance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007)
29. Robert Falkner, Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
30. Jennifer Clapp, 'Global Environmental Governance for Corporate Responsibility and Accountability', Global Environmental Politics 5, no. 3 (2005): 23-34
31. David Levy and Peter Newell, eds, The Business of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005)
32. Benjamin Cashore, 'Legitimacy and the Privatization of Environmental Governance: How Non-State Market-Driven (NSMD) Governance Systems Gain Rule- Making Authority', Governance 15, no. 4 (2002): 503-29
33. Leslie Sklair, 'The Transnational Capitalist Class and Global Politics: Deconstructing the Corporate-State Connection', International Political Science Review 23, no. 2 (2002): 159-74
34. Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
35. Doris Fuchs, 'Commanding Heights? The Strength and Fragility of Business Power in Global Politics', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 771-801.
36. Her framework drew on David Levy and Daniel Egan, 'Corporate Political Action in the Global Polity', in Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System, eds Richard Higgott, Geoffrey Underhill and Andreas Bieler (London: Routledge, 2000).
37. Jennifer Clapp and Doris Fuchs, eds, Corporate Power in Global Agri-Food Governance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
38. Here, for an analysis of the growing concentration of retail power - in particular structural and discursive - see chapter 2, Doris Fuchs, Agni Kalfagianni and Maarten Arentsen, 'Retail Power, Private Standards, and Sustainability in the Global Food System', 30-59.
39. Also, see Peter Newell, 'The Marketisation of Global Environmental Governance: Manifestations and Implications', in The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance: Towards a New Political Economy of Sustainability, eds Jacob Park, Ken Conca and Matthias Finger (London: Routledge, 2008)
40. Matthew Paterson, Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
41. Falkner, Business Power.
42. Robert Falkner, 'The Troubled Birth of the "Biotech Century": Global Corporate Power and its Limits', in Clapp and Fuchs, Corporate Power, 225-51.
43. It is also, of course, possible to define or differentiate forms of power in other ways that capture very similar notions. For example, see Strange's notions of 'structural' power (influence to shape and determine how things get decided) and 'relational' power (control of A to get B to do something). Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988).
44. See, for example, Robert Cox, Production, Power, and World Order (New York: Columbia University Press)
45. Stephen Gill and David Law, 'Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital', International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 4 (1989): 475-99
46. Stephen Gill and David Law, The Global Political Economy: Perspectives, Problems, and Policies (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
47. Clapp and Fuchs, Corporate Power, 9.
48. See also, Steven Bernstein and Erin Hannah, 'Non-state Global Standard Setting and the WTO: Legitimacy and the Need for Regulatory Space', Journal of International Economic Law 11, no. 3 (2008): 575-608 for a similar point about the 'productive' and 'institutional' power of the WTO to legitimise and define standards.
49. Michael P. Vandenbergh, 'The New Wal-Mart Effect: The Role of Private Contracting in Global Governance', UCLA Law Review 54 (2007): 913-70.
50. The use of instrumental power, on the other hand, is more common among Third World logging companies and processors back up the commodity chain: these firms, in effect, can become 'buyer- agents' to exercise instrumental power on behalf of retailers.
51. See Michael Moesgaard Andersen and Flemming Poulfelt, Discount Business Strategy: How the New Market Leaders Are Redefining Business Strategy (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2006).
52. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005: Progress Towards Sustainable Forest Management (Rome: FAO, 2005), 19
53. Gerald Urquhart et al., "Tropical Deforestation," 2001, Reference for Earth Observatory NASA website at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov.
54. Juha-Antti Lamberg, Juha Näsi, Jari Ojala and Pasi Sajasalo, eds, The Evolution of Competitive Strategies in Global Forestry Industries: Comparative Perspectives (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006)
55. It is of note that post-1950 industry and economic expansion mirrors the sharp rise in global greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide emissions. For analysis of the historic rise in GHG emissions, see Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
56. Wal-Mart operates in 15 countries under different banners and corporate subsidiaries. For example, in the United Kingdom, Wal-Mart operates through its wholly owned division, ASDA - the UK's second largest supermarket retail chain (behind Tesco).
57. See Wal-Mart Corporate Fact Sheets at: http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/FactSheets.
58. Steven Mufson, 'In China, Wal-Mart Presses Suppliers on Labor, Environmental Standards', Washington Post, 28 February 2010.
59. Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).
60. For example, the largest household and consumer product manufacturing company in the world, Procter & Gamble, relies on Wal-Mart for 15 percent of its annual sales revenue. See Procter & Gamble (P&G), Annual Report (Cincinnati, OH: Procter & Gamble, 2009), 70.
61. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Global Forest, Paper & Packaging Industry Survey (Vancouver, BC: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, 2009).
62. The characteristics of particular commodity chains vary by product, region and corporate arrangements. Variations also arise over short periods of time as companies, at least compared to states, are highly dynamic and fluid actors: a fact that in part explains why IR theory for MNCs is relatively underdeveloped.
63. For an overview of the 'born global' trend see, for example, S. Tamer Cavusgil and Gary Knight, Born Global Firms: A New International Enterprise (Williston, VT: Business Expert Press, 2009).
64. For an explanation of the 'born-again global' phenomenon see Jim Bell, Rod McNaughton and Stephen Young, 'Born-again Global Firms: An Extension to the "Born Global" Phenomenon', Journal of International Management 7, no. 3 (2001): 173-89.
65. For the following statistics on Chinese production and trade, see the Food and Agriculture Organization's FAOSTAT database at: http://faostat.fao.org/site/630/default.aspx.
66. For a database of reports and statistics, see the Chatham House illegal logging website: http://www. illegal-logging.info.
67. For example, following a decline in 2008, the stock performance of China's (Hong Kong-based) two largest paper packaging companies, Nine Dragons Paper and Lee & Man Paper, rebounded back 398 percent and 393 percent respectively in 2009. This compares to poor financial performances and resiliency over this time by the traditional northern timber firms, such as American-owned Pope & Talbot Company that went bankrupt in 2008 after 160 years in operation.
68. For a full analysis and explanation of global commodity chains for timber, see Peter Dauvergne and Jane Lister, Timber (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming).
69. During the second half of the 20th century the global population grew more than it had in the preceding four million years. Today it stands at 6.8 billion and rising, and is now on track to exceed 9 billion by the middle of this century. Over 95 percent of this increase will occur in developing countries like Indonesia, India and China: ones already at the core of rising timber consumption.
70. China is now aiming to increase private spending from 38 percent to 50 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2025.
71. Removal of trees through a process companies call 'selective logging', for example, commonly ignites a process of permanent deforestation in the tropics, with agricultural companies burning down degraded forests to make way for plantations and cattle ranches.
72. Calculations vary somewhat, with many analysts settling on the 20 percent estimate (including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 2006 Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change). One recent study, however, challenged these previous estimates and put the figure at just 12 percent (with an additional 3 percent from tropical peatlands). See G.R. van der Werf, D.C. Morton, R.S. DeFries, J.G.J. Olivier, P.S. Kasibhatla, R.B. Jackson, G.J. Collatz and J.T. Randerson, 'CO 2 Emissions from Forest Loss', Nature Geoscience 2 (November 2009): 737-8.
73. Peter Dauvergne, The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008)
74. Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).
75. For example, manufacturing companies like Procter & Gamble have offices near Wal-Mart's head office in Bentonville, Alabama, with teams as large as 250 people to manage their supply chain relationship with the giant retailer.
76. Peter Dauvergne, Loggers and Degradation in the Asia-Pacific: Corporations and Environmental Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
77. Michael L. Ross., Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
78. See Gordon Laird, The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009)
79. Ellen Ruppel Shell, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).
80. Many other IR scholars have done excellent work on global forest governance. Our article focuses solely on exploring some of the ways research on global commodity chains could enhance this literature. We do not have the space to analyse other aspects of global forest governance. Particularly valuable books for those wanting to understand these include: Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Transnational Environmental Governance: The Origins and Effects of the Certification of Forests and Fisheries (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010)
81. David Humphreys, Logjam: Deforestation and the Crisis of Global Governance (London: Earthscan, 2005)
82. Radoslav Dimitrov, Science and International Environmental Policy: Regimes and Nonregimes in Global Governance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)
83. Philipp Pattberg, Private Institutions and Global Governance (London: Edward Elgar, 2007)
84. Benjamin Cashore, Graeme Auld and Deanna Newsom, Governing through Markets: Forest Certification and the Emergence of Non-state Authority (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
85. Quoted in Steven Mufson, 'In China, Wal-Mart Presses Suppliers on Labor, Environmental Standards', Washington Post, 28 February 2010.
86. We see a similar pattern around concepts like 'safe foods' and 'green foods'. See Steffanie Scott, Peter Vandergeest and Mary Young, 'Certification Standards and the Governance of Green Foods in Southeast Asia', in Clapp and Fuchs, Corporate Power.
87. The need to engage the powerful retailers is true, too, for the current Marrakech process - an attempt to draft a 10-year framework on 'sustainable production and consumption' for the 2011 session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. For background on the Marrakech process, see the United Nations website at http://esa.un.org/marrakechprocess.
88. For example, Wal-Mart has established global multistakeholder 'value networks' made up of government agencies, non-profits, employees and suppliers to 'green' its supply chain. As well, it has launched a global sustainability consortium that includes academic research institutes as well as public and private sector practitioners to 'build a scientific foundation that drives innovation to improve consumer product sustainability'. See http://sustainabilityconsortium.org.