Global corporations and the governance of standards

Jean-Christophe Graz

Chapter 28 in Handbook of the International Political Economy of the Corporation, 2018, pp 448-462 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The authority gained by technical standards presumably set in favour of powerful global corporations is one of the contentious issues which populist movements have capitalized on worldwide to engrain a new wave of globalization backlash. This chapter explores to what extent global corporations are able to set standards in their own interests, and discusses how such standards exercise a form of alternative authority. In contrast to conventional accounts highlighting welfare costs and benefits of standardization, it forges a global political economy perspective that puts emphasis on the comprehensive foundation of power relations involved in the regulatory authority of standards. It argues that standards reflect a form of hybrid governance over which global corporations have much hold, and that increasingly competes with previous rules governing markets, and more generally with the social foundations of state power. Despite the lack of fully reliable and systematic data on corporate influence in standard-setting processes, the chapter provides some evidence of the ability of corporate representatives to organize themselves and defend their interests on a truly global level.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781785362521/9781785362521.00037.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:16821_28

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().