This editorial offers an introduction to the current issue.

An emerging body of empirical governance studies highlights that the role of the state in governance has been changing. It has moved away from governing societal problems solely through traditional direct regulatory interventions. State actors are now (also) taking up facilitative and enabling roles in innovative voluntary governance arrangements. This article seeks to gain a better understanding of these facilitating and enabling roles of state actors in real world practice and what (clusters of) roles are needed to obtain successful outcomes from these arrangements. It builds on an empirical study of ten different arrangements in the Dutch sustainable building sector, which are analysed using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methodology. It finds no evidence that any of the specific (clusters of) role(s) is necessary to achieve positive outcomes from the arrangements studied, but uncovers that when combined, such roles affect the outcomes of arrangements. It concludes by presenting an evidence-based typology of combinations of roles that state actors may wish to take up in seeking positive outcomes from innovative voluntary governance arrangements, or preventing negative outcomes.

Over the course of time the European Union has increased its powers considerably. Currently, almost all food safety regulations in the member states rest on European law. Despite this common legal base, several differences between member states still exist. This article compares the way Scottish and Dutch authorities deal with a particular item of European food law: the development of national guides to good practice for hygiene and for the application of HACCP principles by the food industry. The results of this investigation are consistent with the conclusion of Falkner et al. that the implementation of EU law in both the Netherlands and the UK depends on domestic issues. The dominant issue in Scotland (and the UK) is the FSA objective to bring consistent food controls and independency from industry which results in the development of governmental guidance. The prevailing issue in the Netherlands is making industry responsible for food safety which helps explain the extensive use of industry guides. This study shows that in order to understand what happens on the ground it is important to look beyond transposition or direct effect and also to investigate the implementation of regulations and to dig deeper than just their transposition.

Forest certification schemes and the legality regime are two main methods of transnational forest governance. A recent review of the literature has revealed that the government and forest certification are often intertwined. Based on that review, this contribution argues that governments play divergent roles in forest certification schemes in different aspects of the regulatory process: namely, agenda and standard setting, implementation, monitoring, and enforcement. In most FSC schemes, governments in developed countries play a less active role in most of these aspects than they do in context-based industry-dominated schemes. In the three emerging economies examined – Indonesia, Brazil, and China – the government sometimes plays a more active role in context-based, industry-dominated schemes than it does in developed countries. The rising legality regime might further strengthen the role of the government in forest governance in these emerging economies. Moreover, China may exemplify the fact that forest governance is entering a new phase, because the country not only exports to countries demanding legal verification, but also imports from countries where the risk of illegal logging is high. This illustrates that the role of governments in forest governance is constantly evolving.

In this paper a literature review is used to explore the role that commercial contracts concluded between private actors play as instruments of regulatory governance. While such contracts are traditionally seen as a means to facilitate exchange between market participants, it is argued in the literature that commercial contracts are becoming increasingly important vehicles for the implementation and enforcement of safety, social and sustainability standards in transnational supply chains. The paper maps the pervasiveness of this development, its drivers, and the governance challenges that arise from it. While doing so, the paper more generally explores the relationship between regulation and contract law.

In a neoliberal age governments, NGOs, food producers and retailers all state that the food system can be governed via consumer choice aka voting with your fork. This makes the retail food label an important space for contests between different actors who each seek to govern the food system according to their own interests and priorities. The paper argues that this makes it crucial to ‘backwards map’ the regulatory governance networks behind the governance claims staked on food labels. The paper uses the example of the contested meaning of ‘free-range’ claims on animal products in Australia to propose and illustrate a methodology for this backwards mapping.

To date the effectiveness of private sustainability standards has been assessed from different angles which attribute different meanings to effectiveness. This contribution compares the effectiveness of two international certification initiatives (i.e. sustainable forestry (Forest Stewardship Council, FSC) and sustainable coffee and cacoa (UTZ Certified)) from three different angles (legal, impact, acceptance/legitimacy/governance). Based on publicly available data, it is shown that FSC scores better on some dimensions of these three angles (e.g. enforcement, cost and price premium, and government acceptance), while UTZ Certified scores better on others (e.g. verifiable evaluation criteria, regular evaluation, innovation). Hence, this analysis shows that a comparative evaluation of both initiatives would have been biased if it would have been based on a single angle approach. There is all the more reason to use such an integrated approach, since the different angles are intertwined. Therefore, it has been established that in order to establish the effectiveness of private certification initiatives an integrated approach is needed which combines different angles. This contribution shows such an approach is feasible.