Rules without Rights

Reviews / Votes

...Rules without Rights provides us rich detail to deepen our understanding of the crowded spaces at the heart of global production. * Stephanie Luce, American Journal of Sociology * Rules without Rights provides a stark account of the flaws of offloading governance onto the private sector to resolve pressing concerns about land and labour rights in the fast and cheap sourcing model of GPNs and the underlying 'impatient' global economic system. . . . it demands that BHR [Business and Human Rights] research and practice be contextualized and account for the local agency and messy dynamics and intersections of transnational, domestic, and organizational governance. * Samentha Goethals, Business and Human Rights Journal * Bartley's book provides a unique and original perspective on the implementation of transnational rules in two countries of the global south. The book's contribution is to show how transnational rules are socially negotiated and re-negotiated over time, how they travel through production networks and are retranslated on the ground in ways that produce unintended and paradoxical outcomes. * Sigrid Quack, Socio-Economic Review * Rules without Rights is a theoretically provocative and empirically rich and informative book that engages with the key questions and debates in the field of transnational governance and private regulation. . . . It will be essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the political economy of private regulation, transnational governance, labor studies and the state, markets and social movements in China and Indonesia. * Lu Zhang, Socio-Economic Review * A tremendous and in many ways gutsy contribution. The book required a prodigious amount of fieldwork in two difficult environments; includes the careful analysis of qualitative and quantitative data; and runs the risk of antagonizing both proponents of TPR [transnational private regulation] . . . and their myriad critics. * Andrew Schrank, Socio-Economic Review * Rules without Rights is carefully researched, is trenchant but fair in its critique, and offers enough detail in its four chapters of case study to help direct those wrestling with real problems in any real world capacity. Bartley convincingly shows why the ''empty space'' assumption that underpins studies to date is not just an errant abstraction, the sort of thing that is not quite true but also harmless. * Josh Whitford, Contemporary Sociology * Tim Bartley writes with the authority that comes from being a patient researcher of the 'concrete implications' of the private transnational rules that have come to characterize the current international business environment... This book is a welcome and much needed contribution to our understanding of how micro and macro contexts interact in different international settings and is, in my judgement, a thoughtful and well-written volume that makes for essential reading. * Jean Jenkins, Journal of World-Systems Research * Rules without Rights, given its theoretical and empirical richness, should be read widely by scholars and students of comparative politics, labor studies, and management, if they wish to take on the challenge of refining theories concerning transnational governance, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and standards. * Mari Sako, ILR Review * This book provides a major contribution to analysis of the failure of private rules on sustainability and labour standards in global production networks. It provides a critical way forward through 're-centering' the state in the public and private governance of land and labour rights in a global economy. * Professor Stephanie Barrientos, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. * Bartley brings together factory workers and forests in China and Indonesia in an elegant comparative design that combines careful empirical grounding with analytical breadth and sophistication. Rules without Rights is a signal accomplishment and a significant step forward for the literature on the interaction of transnational governance and state regulation. * Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley. * In Rules without Rights: Land, Labor, and Private Authority in the Global Economy, Tim Bartley explores the role of private regulators, serving global consumers, in promoting forestry sustainability and labor standards in both China and Indonesia. The evidence is dark and disturbing. Private regulators are frequently misled by forest and factory managers who bluff, delay, and lie. In the end, private regulators often do little to promote sustainability or human rights, and are no more effective than national regulators who serve local masters. Rules without Rights establishes an ambitious new research agenda for students of modern, transnational, capitalism. * Frank Dobbin, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University. * Corporate codes of conduct purport to transcend the wider political economy: insulating islands of better work, notwithstanding civil society crackdowns and countervailing incentives. Yet, such claims are misleading, Bartley demonstrates. Although brands ostensibly support freedom of association, many source from authoritarian countries, quashing the autonomous labour movements that mobilise for better pay, conditions and rights. Current sourcing practices thus incentivise repression. Enough of this pretence, insists Bartley. Buyers must become legally responsible for abuses in their supply chains. Extra-territorial liability would encourage more apatient sourcinga (longer-term contracts) in low- and middle-income countries with autonomous labour movements, rewarding good practice. Is this possible? Yes! - exclaims Bartley, highlighting an inspirational example from forestry. * Alice Evans is a Lecturer in the Social Science of Development at Kingas College London. *