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1 - Non-state actors as standard setters: framing the issue in an interdisciplinary fashion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2010

By
Anne Peters ,
Lucy Koechlin  and
Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel
Edited by
Anne Peters ,
Lucy Koechlin ,
Till Förster  and
Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel
Anne Peters
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Lucy Koechlin
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Till Förster
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
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Summary

Background and context

On all levels of governance, standard setting (norm formation or regulation), is no longer the exclusive domain of states or governmental authorities. The role and the capacity of increasingly diverse and polymorphous non-state actors involved in standard setting are expanding. Also, the processes by which norms are shaped are becoming more varied. Finally, the rapidly growing number of national, sub-national, and international standards has increased these standards' diversity, but also regulatory overlap and norm conflicts.

The context in which the proliferation of non-state actors' standard setting occurs is well known. Globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation waves which swept the globe in the 1980s and 1990s have contributed to shifting the focus away from the state as the sole source of regulation. The result is the often referenced blurring of the public and the private sectors. The integration of national economies into a world economy has diminished or at least modified the authority of the state and has pushed its regulatory capacity to its limits both in substance and in terms of territorial scope. Policy issues that have formerly been treated at the level of nation states, for instance environmental pollution, migration, or organised crime, are increasingly understood as phenomena with global scope and global roots which cannot be tackled in a satisfactory manner through national standard setting.

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Non-State Actors as Standard Setters , pp. 1 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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