Abstract
Global value chains (‘GVCs’) channel commodities, knowledge and capital, but also regulation. By placing obligations on lead firms to be satisfied across the value chain, rule-setters can regulate transnational production entities, GVCs, by proxy. In doing so, they overcome the territorial limits of their regulatory capacity.
Regulators make extensive use of this possibility in the latest generation of transnational sustainability laws adopted in the Global North. More sinister motives, such as security of supply, are also being embedded in regulation through value chains. All this leads to the question of how such regulation affects the current, territorially-based status quo of global trade.
We chart the transnational extension of governance through GVCs, how such governance is increasingly the focus of explicit regulatory activity, and what this means for the political economy of transnational production. In particular, we undertake a functional comparison of the justifications for and mechanisms deployed in EU regulations adopting an explicit value chain perspective, such as the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation.
Authors
- Jaakko Salminen, Copenhagen Business School / University of Turku (jaakko.salminen@utu.fi)
- Klaas Eller, University of Amsterdam (k.h.eller@uva.nl)
- Mikko Rajavuori, University of Eastern Finland (mikko.rajavuori@uef.fi)
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