Social learning within institutions or expanding them? The limits of private governance in environmental politics

Social Learning within institutions or expanding them? The limits of private governance in environmental politics.

During the 1990´s main attention has been payed to institutional design and reforms as drivers for social learning. Private governance in the form of voluntary agreements and corporate social responsability were put on the top of the agenda of environmental politics and global governance. We use to consider accountability, transparency and participation as the main criteria for improving democracy, governance and institutional reform. However, the current impasse of global environmental politics and the recent malaise respecting existing political regimes as well can be conceived as signs of such an exhaustion of this agenda. The aim of the paper is to explore the opportunities for social innovation and institutional experimentation tha can be opened, if one increase the tension between the agenda of institutional reform as minimal standards of "good governance" and the normative implications they contain.