The Democratic Deficit: The Rise of Private Agri-Food Standards in the Global South

The past few decades have seen a tremendous expansion of private authority in global governance. No exception, the agri-food industry has become increasingly privatized in its ownership and governance. Illustrative of this point has been the declining authority of public international bodies such as the UN’s Codex Alimentarius in the governance of agriculture. These developments are the result of a normative shift from government to governance. Such trends have proven particularly hard hitting on agriculture in the Global South, where numerous experts have documented, for example, the impacts of cash-crops for export, land grabs and agricultural speculation on the most disadvantaged.

My presentation will examine the development of agricultural standard setting and certification as a case study of private agricultural governance. Using GlobalGAP, a business-to-business standard setting body, the paper has two purposes. The first is to use private certification and standards to highlight the very real and harmful impacts private regulatory developments are having on poor agricultural suppliers in the global South. This will be done predominantly from a governance perspective.  The second is to explain the broad-based shift toward a preference for private governance that has occurred within agricultural governance over the last few decades. In particular, I will examine the ideas and logic of neoliberalism and globalization frequently used to justify this shift.



By addressing the impact private regulatory standards have had on suppliers in the global South the presentation will also indirectly focus on a number of theoretical questions revolving around globalization and global governance. These include questions regarding the arrival of new political actors as key regulators of global industries; the role of the state and public regulation in agricultural global governance; and the ability of private actors to govern in the interests in mind of the broader public and the disadvantaged, in particular.