Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond: Experiments in Globalizing Justice

This book presents a theoretically and methodologically innovative approach to examining how production and trade within transnational supply chains can be effectively governed so as to advance fairness and justice within a global economy. The authors examine the potential role of a range of emerging state and non-state initiatives within agricultural and industrial supply chains, which seek to promote justice within global production systems by developing non-state mechanisms of public governance.The contributors evaluate such initiatives through two key analytic lenses. The first is concerned with the impact of the initiatives on vulnerable workers and producers in globalising economic sectors. From this perspective, authors are concerned with the potential of such mechanisms to alleviate poverty and increase the freedom of workers and communities to exercise meaningful control over the conditions in which they work and live. The second derives from governance and regulatory literature and concerns the broader effectiveness and legitimacy of the initiatives. Drawing on analysis from both these perspectives, the book explores deeper questions regarding the real potential of such initiatives to function as transformative strategies to advance principles of fairness and justice within the institutional structures governing global production and trade.