Transnational Governance and South American Politics ― The Political Economy of Norms

This book examines the interface between transnational private governance and domestic politics in South America. It explores the social and political factors that condition how ‘global’ private norms, discourses, and initiatives dealing with sustainability and CSR regulation are engaged with, hybridized, and challenged by local actors in Argentina and Brazil. Inverting the conventional approach to global governance studies, it unpacks the complex forms in which domestic political-cultural elements embed global norms and discourses with meaning and mobilizing power, conditioning their appeal to potential participants and supporters. In doing so, the author illuminates the ‘receiving side’ of private regulation and governance, developing a nuanced understanding of transnational norm diffusion wherein political and ideational factors in the global South are granted primacy over global structures, processes, and agents.

Alejandro Milciades Pena is Lecturer of International Politics at the University of York, UK. His research interests cover state-society relations in South America, political sociology and social movements, transnational private governance, and system theory approaches to International Relations theory.