Ben Cashore
Professor, Environmental Policy and Governance and Political Science; director, Program on Forest Policy and GovernanceResearch
I am a political scientist trained in comparative public policy. My research projects address the issue of sustainable forest management (SFM) and the opportunities and constraints in achieving this goal. Because SFM in particular, and environmental governance is general, is multi-faceted and poses a challenge to every level of decision-making, I consciously seek out, and integrate, a number of other relevant disciplinary lenses into my work, including insights from international relations, organization sociology, economics, and law. For the same reasons I have applied my substantive research agenda broadly – exploring international rule-making development, global economic dynamics, domestic policy-making issues, and firm-level sustainability initiatives. This broad research agenda has led me to make a path breaking and sustained contribution to understanding the emergence and institutionalization of “non-state market driven” (NSMD) global governance. Known generally as environmental and social “certification programs”, which recognize and reward individual firms who operate according to pre-established rules, NSMD is important because, as I reveal below, its growth in the global forest sector has led stakeholders to promote the model to address a range of other key global policy problems including fisheries depletion, mining destruction, environmental and social deterioration associated with global coffee production, tourism impacts in ecologically sensitive areas, and sweat shop labor practices. The remainder of this statement details four themes which permeate my research program.
A. The Emergence of Non-state Market Driven (NSMD) Global Governance
This project examines the increasing privatization of environmental policy, or NSMD governance, in which non-state organizations have turned to market mechanisms to address policy problems of concern to global civil society. My historical and ongoing theoretical and research emphasis on the case of forest certification, is now being expanded and applied to understanding the emergence of private authority in other sectors noted above. The interest in the use of NSMD systems to address SFM goals domestically and globally has become so intense that we could be on the precipice of a new regulatory paradigm shift delineated by global supply chains, rather than territorial boundaries associated with the nation state. Recognition of this transformative potential justifies, indeed, requires, that scholars careful assess whether, and how, such systems may be able to effectively address enduring problems where governments have been unable. My initiation empirical research interests in describing and comparing European and North American approaches to forest certification, and global dynamics, have now expanded to include developing and emerging economy countries. I have also undertaken, with students and colleagues, rigorous empirical assessments of the impacts of forest certification in the conservation of biological diversity. One of the most important publications out of this project, Governing Through Markets: Forest Certification and the Emergence of Non-state Authority (with former masters students Graeme Auld and Deanna Newsom) was awarded the International Studies Association’s 2005 Sprout prize for best book of the year on international environmental policy and politics.
B. Globalization, Internationalization and Environmental Policy Change
This research project seeks to better understand the way global and international pressures shape domestic environmental policy making. The theoretical point of departure is with the current “globalization” and “policy convergence” literatures’ debate as to whether globalization leads to domestic policy convergence and whether that convergence is likely to create “upward” or “downward” pressures regarding environmental, social and labour standards. Bernstein and I have argued that much of the debate over globalization occurs because analysts often conflate different non-domestic factors, or focus on particular sources of influence to the exclusion of others. To remedy this problem, we make a distinction between the structural economic forces associated with rising levels of trade, finance and investment (globalization), and the increased activities or influence of transnational actors and international institutions, and the ideas they promote (internationalization). As a result of this distinction we uncovered four distinct pathways through which transnational actors and international institutions influence domestic policy –the use of markets, international rules, normative discourse, and infiltration of domestic policy making processes. The key article on this topic won the Canadian Political Science Association’s 2001 John McMenemy award for the best article in the 2000 volume of the Canadian Journal of Political Science. We have since expanded the theoretical framework and empirical analyses, examining the case of Canadian forest policy generally and Canadian environmental policy. Within this broad framework, I have undertaken extensive research into the influence of North American domestic and international trade rules, including the impact of the Canada-US softwood lumber dispute, and their consequences on forest management policies and environmental politics.
C. Comparing Global Forestry Policies
This related project seeks to understand why different countries and regions have developed distinct policy responses to pressure from civil society for increased environmental protection. Several research projects and collaborations on this broad project draw from the historical institutionalist approach within political science – examining how institutions in Canada and the US have mediated and shaped environmental politics in these regions. The research has found that previous characterization a single US “environmental policy style” incomplete, as such an approach fails to capture environmental forest politics at the state level in the United States, where most of the regulation over private forestland occurs. Institutions and policy legacies have developed in unique patterns within the US and Canada, constraining and directing current policy choices. I am currently engaged, with Dr. Constance McDermott and Prof. Peter Kanowski, in completing a book on this topic which offers a new policy classification system with which to describe better domestic and global forest policies, which we use to offer new hypotheses regarding policy formation and implementation..
D. Firm-level Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives
This project examines the way firms have responded to environmental and social pressures from civil society. I have developed a theoretical framework that account for divergent corporate responses to external pressures by linking organization sociology’s work on firm responses to political science research on policy networks and institutions. The first stage of this project argued (with Vertinsky) that the policy network and policy regime setting in which firms conduct their operations strongly influence the nature of responses they undertake. A second phase developed a quantitative data on individual forest landowner and forest companies attitudes toward forest certification. I am now concluding a third phase of this project with Prakash, Sasser and Auld that compares 16 firm level evaluations toward forest certification through the use of comparative case studies.
