Graham Bullock

Independent Labels? the Power Behind Environmental Information about Products and Companies

Power is a ubiquitous term in political science, and yet the discipline lacks a metric of power that can be applied to both formal and informal political contexts. Building on past work on power and power resources, this paper develops a method to estimate the power of different actors over an organization. It uses this method to analyze the power of the public, private, and civil sectors within an original dataset of 245 cases of product and corporate environmental evaluations, such as ENERGY STAR, LEED Certification, and Newsweek’s Greenest Company Rankings. These initiatives have received limited attention from the political science literature, but they have become an increasingly prominent political phenomenon. The paper finds that the private and civil sectors likely have more power over these information-based governance initiatives than the public sector. It also reveals their lack of transparency and hybrid accountability relationships, which complicate their legitimacy and effectiveness.

The Shadow of the Consumer: Analyzing the Importance of Consumers to the Uptake and Sophistication of Ratings, Certifications, and Eco-Labels

Why has the market uptake and sophistication of information-based environmental governance (IBEG) programs like eco-labeling increased despite mixed signals on the willingness and ability of individual consumers to support such programs? We argue that the extant literature on IBEG focuses too narrowly on individual consumer purchasing decisions to the exclusion of other mechanisms through which consumers, both as individuals and as an imagined collective, exert influence. As a corrective, we present a novel conceptual framework that highlights the different causal mechanisms through which consumers contribute to the uptake and sophistication of IBEG. We call our framework “the shadow of the consumer” since it suggests a more latent and indirect role for consumers than voting-with-one’s-wallet. Our analysis adds nuance and complexity to accounts of consumer agency vis-à-vis environmental ratings, standards, certifications, and eco-labels and helps explain the proliferation and growing sophistication of such programs despite the variability of individual consumer support.

Promoting Sustainable Management: World Wildlife Fund’s Hybrid Strategy to Change the Luxury Industry

Scholars generally characterize activist organizations as pursuing either “reformist” or “radical” agendas and using either collaborative or confrontational strategies to engage with firms. This paradigm oversimplifies the behavior of these organizations and ignores the possibility that they may pursue hybrid approaches that combine a range of strategies. This chapter explores how the non profit WWF used such an approach to engage the luxury industry in its 2007 Deeper Luxury report. The chapter analyzes the report’s descriptive and injunctive normative statements that positively engage the industry and its controversial rating system that directly confronts the top ten luxury firms. The chapter also examines the sustainability-related documents of the ten rated companies, and finds that their responses to WWF’s normative demands varied significantly, with L’Oreal, LVMH, and PPR demonstrating the greatest responsiveness. It concludes that this hybrid approach had mixed results in promoting sustainable management within the luxury industry, and may require collaboration among organizations with different skills and reputations.

Addressing concerns about climate policies: the possibilities and perils of responsive accommodation

ABSTRACT Responsive accommodation is a political strategy that addresses concerns about a policy proposal by incorporating amendments that address those concerns. This approach can broaden the policy’s appeal, but is strategically risky, as it can alienate the policy’s base of support. We examine this strategy and its application in the politics of climate change. Using a novel survey experiment, relative public support is evaluated for two amendments to a carbon tax proposal – revenue neutrality assurances and a carbon tariff – designed to ease concerns about taxes and global competitiveness. Analysis shows that support for a carbon tax increases when coupled with a carbon tariff, but decreases among some of the policy’s supporters when described as revenue-neutral. These results suggest that policymakers using a responsive accommodation strategy must carefully weigh its possible risks and rewards in their particular context.