Responsible Business: Self-Governance and Law in Transnational Economic Transactions (Onati International Series in Law and Society)

With the globalization of markets, the phenomenon of market failure has also been globalized. Against the backdrop of the territoriality of nation-state jurisdictions and the slow progress of international law based on the principle of sovereignty, this poses a serious challenge. However, while the legal infrastructure of globalized markets has a firm basis in formal, national, and international law, the side effects of economic transactions on public goods, such as the environment, human health, and consumer interests often escape state-based regulation. Therefore, attention is drawn to the potential of self-regulation by transnational industry. While hypotheses abound which try to grasp this phenomenon in conceptual terms, both empirical and legal research is still underdeveloped. Responsible Business helps to fill this gap in two ways. First, the book recontructs self-regulatory settings - such as multinational corporations, transnational production networks, and industry-NGO partnerships - in terms of organization, problem-solving, and legitimation. Secondly, it links their empirical findings to formal law by examining how legal concepts are reflected in self-regulation, how the law builds on self-regulatory solutions, and how it helps to establish favorable conditions for private governance. The essays in this volume are well-grounded and will be important to those interested in the sociological aspects of company and insolvency law. (Series: Onati International Series in Law and Society)