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This chapter evaluates Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) as a form of Transnational Private Regulation. This concerns the issue of how to best regulate BCR as a form of TPR. In the EU, the discipline of how best to regulate has become known as ‘Better Regulation’ (BR). The chapter evaluates BCR from the perspective of BR as to whether the norm-setting for BCR meets the basic requirements for EU law-making, for instance, with regards to requirements of participation and transparency; and whether BCR (qualifying as co-regulation) regulating data protection (qualifying as a human right and freedom), concern an area of law which is traditionally not considered suitable by EU regulators to be regulated by co- or self-regulation. Proposals are made to bring the BCR norm-setting, evaluation/monitoring, and enforcement in line with the body of thought on BR.

A vast new world of transnational standards has emerged, covering issues from human rights to sustainability to food safety. This chapter develops a framework for making sense of this new global order. It is tempting to imagine that global rules can and should bypass corrupt, incapacitated, or illegitimate governments in poor and middle-income countries. This assumption must be rejected if we want to understand the consequences of global rules and the prospects for improvement. After showing how a combination of social movements, global production networks, and neoliberalism gave rise to transnational private regulation, the chapter builds the foundations for the comparative approach of this book. The book’s comparative analysis of land and labor in Indonesia and China sheds light on two key fields of transnational governance, their implications in democratic and authoritarian settings, and the problems of governing the global economy through private regulation.

This chapter discusses some contractual issues in light of the requirement that Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) should be internally binding on the group companies and employees of the multinational, and externally binding for the benefit of the beneficiaries of BCR. The latter requires discussion of the enforceability of unilateral undertakings by the beneficiaries of BCR. Transnational Private Regulation (TPR) is often effectuated through contractual ‘supply chain management’, a solution which is also part of the BCR regime. Supply chain management also raises issues of enforceability by the beneficiaries of these contracts, which are of equal relevance to BCR. How the various supply chain issues can be best addressed in BCR is discussed.

The chapter describes the book’s remit, rationale, scope, and structure. It places the book in broader discourses concerned with (i) the role of law in Internet governance, (ii) metagovernance, and (iii) the utility and legitimacy of transnational private regulation. It introduces the fact that the governance structure for the Internet has been formed largely outside a treaty or other legislative framework that is Internet-specific. It explains that contracts provide much of the legal basis for the present structure and that this structure cannot be properly understood without explaining the contractual frameworks.