The new regionalism in global organic agricultural governance through standards: A cross-regional comparison

Abstract

In recent years, scholars in global environmental politics have contributed to the development of regional environmental governance (REG) research. This article contributes to the ongoing debate from an international relations perspective. It provides findings from a comprehensive qualitative comparative analysis of the six regional organic agriculture standards (OAS) in Europe, East Africa, the Pacific, Central America, and Asia. Building on research on norm localization, the analysis draws attention to interactions between the global and regional regulatory levels, regional issue-specific normative infrastructures, and the pooling of different sources of political authority by transnational entrepreneurs and regional agents. The analysis serves three purposes in the light of the ongoing debate on REG: (1) to conduct systematic comparative research; (2) to locate regional OAS within the context of conceptual debates about global norm and policy diffusion, critical norm research, policy mobilities, and comparative regionalism; and (3) to outline future areas of research.