The Causes and Consequences of Private Governance: The Changing Roles of State and Private Actors

MZES Postdoc Conference organized by Sebastian Koos, Jennifer Shore, and Jale Tosun

The two-day conference will serve as a platform for an interdisciplinary exchange on the causes and consequences of private governance, bringing together international scholars from multiple academic fields. We seek a variety of contributions for the workshop: First, we will examine works that highlight the emergence and diffusion of private governance systems. Second, we turn to the effects of private governance, both for societies, but also for businesses, standards organizations, and governments. We welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions. Although the study of private governance is by no means a new area of investigation, the research field remains quite fragmented in terms of both its objects of interest and disciplinary foci. Against this background, the workshop pursues a twofold goal: 1) to take stock of the large volumes of research on the topic of private governance and 2) to systematically map out the road ahead in order to identify which questions remain unanswered and where the new frontiers lie. We are especially but not exclusively interested in contributions that shed light on private governance in the fields of environmental protection and climate change, labour standards, and product quality and safety.

Call for papers: See file attachment below.