College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item The Political Economy of Social Markets: How Voluntary Standards Emerge, Compete, and Segment International Policy-making.(2014) Helou, Rabih; Haufler, Virginia A; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How do we make sense of the tangled web of voluntary standards that have recently proliferated across the globe? There are over 430 different social and environmental voluntary standards in the world today. Prior to 1990 there were twelve. Most of these voluntary standards exist within industries that contain several other standards and ecolabels. Behind the scenes of this veritable industry of industry standards, we observe a vibrant and yet faintly understood political landscape. In some markets, as in the forest industry, industry actors revolt against NGO-initiated standards to form competing standards. In other markets, as in the diamonds industry, industry actors, advocacy groups and even states align to create the dominant voluntary standard system for the planet. While still in others, as in the coffee industry, there is such a diversity of standards originating from a variety of actors that few patterns have yet to be discovered. This research explores the logic behind voluntary standards, and proposes a framework to explain and predict the pattern of emergence and competition of standards within an industry. Drawing from existing research in norms evolution, non-state market drive governance, voluntary clubs and corporate social responsibility, I develop two principle arguments. The first, the logic of market integration, suggests that when social movement norms are increasingly institutionalized within markets, the movement itself will gradually take on the forms, character and procedures of market actors. The second extends this logic in order to understand how, why and when multiple voluntary standards emerge, and seemingly compete, within the same industries. Based on the in-depth case analysis of the coffee market, as well as an extended analysis of ten other markets, I highlight how this phenomenon of multiple standards may be understood by examining change along two factors: Industry Political Centralization and Differentiation. The overarching thesis is that standards proliferate where power is more decentralized, and opportunities for differentiation along market segments are highest. Further, that differentiation also follows a pattern: higher, more stringent standards, will occupy higher end market segments, while lower, less stringent standards occupy mainstream market segments.Item Constructing Private Social Responsibility Standards: A Social Movement's Struggle to Regulate Global Capitalism(2012) Dean, Paul; Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the last several decades, increasing corporate abuses against labor, human rights, and the environment have sparked an explosion in the discourse around what corporations' responsibilities are to society. One form of this discourse has been the production of specific sets of standards by the social responsibility movement to hold businesses accountable to society. While many in the movement continue to target the state to advocate for laws and regulations, the movement has also increasingly targeted corporations directly in an effort to create private standards to which they expect businesses to adhere. Relying on contentious outsider pressure against corporations, advocates work through institutional channels and with corporations to promote social change in a way that traditional social movement theories have largely ignored. This study examines socially responsible investing and social certifications as two particularly important sites for the development of private standards that function outside of the state. Each of these sites are conceptualized as social movement fields in which actors compete to define standards, and which have their own unique rules, opportunities, and constraints. Specifically, I ask: how are private social responsibility standards constructed? Within each field, I draw upon qualitative, in-depth interviews to examine multiple cases, or sets of standards, to understand how advocates translate their expectations into specific standards and what field-level mechanisms shape the standard-setting process. I compare standards across time, and within and across fields to identify causal mechanisms that shape standards in similarly patterned ways. My findings show how power, culture, and institutions shape standards by including or excluding certain criteria and raising or lowering thresholds of socially responsible practices. By examining standard-setting within these fields, we can better understand how meanings are assigned to the different claims of social responsibility, the opportunities and constraints of these fields for the global governance of capitalism, and the relationship between outsider and insider strategies within social movement theory.