The Power of Big Box Retail in Global Environmental Governance: Bringing Commodity Chains Back into IR

What is it about?

This article focuses on analysing the consequences for global governance of the growing power of the world’s biggest retailers, illustrating with the case of global forest governance. It argues that the rising power of big retail within global commodity chains is creating both significant challenges — and some opportunities — for global environmental governance. The analysis suggests a need for IR to focus more on the shifting political power of multinational corporations, as both barriers to, and progress in, the governance of complex global issues such as deforestation and climate change increasingly occur in the corporate sphere. More specifically, the authors see great value in bringing research on globalising commodity chains back into IR, first revealing the power dynamics within these chains, then building on this to analyse the implications for global change and world politics. This reinforces and complements the message in Bernstein et al. (in this volume) that understanding the future of global climate governance must include the complex interactions between transnational governance practices and interstate negotiations. But it also suggests a need for IR scholars to go even further to unpack the consequences of how the shifting power dynamics of governance practices within the corporate sphere are intersecting — or running parallel — with more overarching multilateral and transnational environmental processes.

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Why is it important?

This article focuses on analysing the consequences for global governance of the growing power of the world’s biggest retailers, illustrating with the case of global forest governance.