Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Public and Private Regulatory Interactions: EU Responses to Private Environmental Regulation

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This dissertation project aims to understand how different regulatory institutions interact. Itwill examine the following research question: "Why has the European Union (EU) responded toexisting private environmental regulation in different issue areas in diverse regulatory ways?"Private environmental regulation in this project refers to voluntary certification and eco-labelingprograms developed by non-state actors (industry organizations; firms; non-governmentalorganizations) to induce corporate environmentally friendly behavior. By examining EUresponses to private regulation in four issue areas (organic agriculture, biofuels, fisheries, andfair trade) this research will explain why in some cases the EU has responded strongly bydeveloping its own public certification program, while in other cases it has decided not tointervene at all, or only in a very limited way.By examining the historical co-evolution of public policy and private regulation in these issueareas, and by analyzing the decision-making processes of the EU's regulatory responses, thisstudy will identify the causal mechanisms and processes that can explain the observedvariation. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews I will gather original data from EUofficials and decision-makers, EU-level and national interest and advocacy groups,representatives from private environmental regulatory programs, issue experts and academics.These data will be complemented with data on the decision-making processes, which will begathered during desk research and from notes and documents obtained from interviewees.This dissertation's main intellectual contribution is its focus on an unexplored dependentvariable, namely the regulatory responses of public authorities to private environmentalregulation. This study will contribute to the nascent research on the interaction between publicand private regulation and on the role of non-state actors in politics more broadly. Even thoughthis dissertation will be limited to environmental issue areas, it is expected that the conclusionsare generalizable to other issue areas as well. It is not expected, in other words, that theparticular characteristics of the environmental issues determine public responses to privateregulation, but rather that more general factors, such as the specific features of privateregulatory programs and corporate involvement in these programs, explain public authorities'responses.Private actors are currently using certification and labeling programs to address environmentaland social problems in an increasingly diverse range of issue areas. This research will contributeto generating policy relevant knowledge on how public authorities can attain a betterintegration of public and private policy instruments. Furthermore, understanding the waypublic policy interacts with private regulatory programs will generate useful information forinitiators of such programs regarding their design and functioning.