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This book examines how the global environment is regulated and, in particular, the diversity of actors involved in addressing the problem of climate change. It considers the role of private actors, such as nongovernmental organizations and transnational networks, in global environmental politics. It shows that private actors are increasingly assuming duties normally associated with governments. They are taking on the role of regulators, as they create, implement, and enforce rules to manage global environmental problems. The book asks when and why private actors perform these regulatory roles. It cites three examples to demonstrate the diversity of private authority and the ways in which nonstate actors are serving as rule makers: the first deals with Walmart, the second is about the ruffed lemur, and the third relates to the Kyoto Protocol. The book distinguishes between two different types of private authority: delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority.

This chapter describes a theory of private authority, based on the notion of supply and demand, that explains when private authority emerges and why, and whether it is delegated or entrepreneurial. A theory of private authority contributes to larger discussions about institutional design and provides new insights into the mechanisms through which global cooperation might occur. The chapter first explains what authority is and why people obey it. It then defines private authority and examines its major characteristics, including why actors choose to consent to privately created rules. It argues that in contemporary politics expertise is a key engine for legitimacy and thus for consent, because it allows actors to provide benefits to others. The chapter proceeds by exploring delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority. Finally, it develops expectations about when private authority emerges in world politics—and what type of authority will likely develop.

This chapter examines entrepreneurial authority from the 1950s to the present by focusing on the creation of environmental civil regulations. Private agents are most often useful for their expertise in technical matters and are delegated other tasks with little impact on state autonomy. However, they are rarely charged with potentially weightier tasks such as enforcement or rule making, and they are seldom the sole agents charged with a given task. Yet, if private actors are increasingly important in the landscape of global governance as many have claimed, the question is where and how they are projecting authority. The answer lies in the concept of entrepreneurial authority. The chapter shows that there has been a precipitous increase in the number of civil regulations since the 1950s. It also reveals that there is competition among various sources of entrepreneurial authority: different private actors are jockeying for market share in fairly narrow issue areas.

This book has examined how private rule makers are contributing to the management of global environmental problems by rethinking the meaning of private authority. It has shown that private authority is diffused through and among a diverse set of actors, creating multiple loci for rule-making and governance. It has also distinguished two different types of private authority: delegated authority and entrepreneurial authority. This concluding chapter summarizes the book's findings and considers their theoretical implications—namely, appropriate ways to evaluate the effects of private authority in world politics. It suggests potential contributions of private authority to the climate change regime as it moves forward. Finally, it outlines future avenues for inquiry, situating this study within a much broader set of questions about institutional complexity and density and the effects of private authority over time.

This chapter examines a case of entrepreneurial authority in the climate change regime: the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The protocol is a set of accounting standards to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions created by individual firms. These standards were created by two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and have subsequently become one of the most widely accepted accounting methodologies for measuring and reporting emissions. The chapter explains how these NGOs were able to insert themselves into the policy process while the United States and European Union were arguing about an appropriate role for emissions trading. In particular, it considers the success of WRI and WBCSD in creating the de facto standard for GHG emissions accounting at the firm (or “corporate”) level.