SPPA Professor Graeme Auld, and Stefan Renckens have co-authored a transformative study published in New Political Economy: “Rethinking Capacities of Regulatory Market-Assurance Intermediaries: The Case of Seafood Sustainability Audits.”

Credible assurances about the invisible qualities of goods and services –such as sustainability features – are key to market governance. Thetheory of regulatory intermediaries offers a lens for assessing diverseregulatory contexts where differently configured actors serve as market-assurance intermediaries between rule-makers and rule-targets. Studiesusing this theory have clarified the consequences of these configurationsfor regulatory capture, co-regulation, feedback effects, and the(re)production of knowledge and power. However, the distinction andrelations between organisational and individual intermediaries remainunder theorised. We reconceptualise the individual capacities of expertiseand independence and assess these for 283 individuals performing 312seafood sustainability audits for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).Examining the individuals and teams performing these audits uncoversotherwise invisible biases within intermediary processes, including inassessors’ professional, educational and personal backgrounds, thecomposition of assessment teams and assessors’ experience inconducting MSC audits. The analysis highlights that intermediarycapacities are co-determined by individual assessors and auditorganisations and are only partly under the control of the MSC asregulator. A shift to an individual level of analysis thus elucidates newconsequences for the legitimacy of the regulator and intermediaries andfor the (re)production of power and inequities in global market governance.

Check it out here!