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Chapter 2

Analytical Framework

Introduction

In order to broaden current understandings of private authority, as previously mentioned, this book leverages the analytical powers of discourse analysis to examine two cases: forests and fisheries. These cases were selected due to their key position within environmental politics, and because they each contain a variety of private actors competing for private authority. Thus, they serve as rich analytical fields that are ripe for study. Within each of these cases, there will be a particular focus on what are arguably considered the most successful actors within each domain—the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for forests and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for fisheries. I have adopted this approach because I argue that the other actors examined in the case studies have come to determine their policies in relation to the positions of the FSC/MSC. Therefore, all other actors will be examined in relation to the FSC/MSC. Yet, because a variety of sub-cases will be examined within each of the cases, there is sufficient in-case variation to ward off accusations of case-selection bias.

Discourse analysis was selected as a methodological tool because the theory is premised on showing that social position within a networked political sector plays a pivotal role in the exercise of private authority. The discourse approach adopted was that of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), specifically because it is designed to examine the way social practices “systematically form the identities of subjects and objects by articulating together a series of contingent signifying elements available in a discursive field.”¹ Thus, it is particularly well equipped for application to this book, and its networked approach. Four concepts make up the core of Laclau and Mouffe’s framework and will serve as guideposts for the theoretical propositions to be delivered. Here, then, I will briefly sketch their contents in order to frame the arguments laid out in the book. The core concepts are articulation, discourse, nodal points, and empty signifiers. These concepts are all geared toward explaining identity emergence and recognition. Articulation is essentially defined as any articulatory practice that establishes a relationship between entities in a way that modifies their identity.² Discourse is then the entire discursive field constructed as a result of these articulatory practices. In the case of this book, the focus will be on environmental discourses. This book identifies 3 broad environmental discourses: the preservation discourse, the sustainable development discourse, and the environmental economism discourse. Each of these discourses shapes the scope of acceptable actor behavior because encoded in them are certain social rules. These rules are socially constructed and are followed because failure to do so threatens one’s identity. However, by focusing on changes in actors as they navigate through competing discourses, it is essential to provide grounding to this ever-shifting and developing process. Laclau and Mouffe provide a means to do so in what they deem nodal points. These points are “privileged signifiers,” or reference points wherein discourses can bind together to form a coherent system of meaning.³ Actors position themselves around these nodal points in order to make meaning of the world and of their role in that world. Their movement around these nodal points corresponds to shifting identities. These movements can be identified by shifts in their discourse and discursive practices. As actors navigate this terrain, however, they are constantly challenging the position and identity of other actors. This is indicative of the open-ended nature of any social system, including networks. These systems are perpetually open to challenge and reformulation. Actors are constantly striving for their closure, to ward off challenge and entrench themselves in positions of authority. This invariably leads them to create discourses filled with rhetorical impossibilities and contradictions. As these actors strive to close social systems of signification, to entrench themselves and maintain the status quo, they must try to close out challenges to constructed meanings. To account for this process, Laclau and Mouffe present the concept of empty signifiers. There is always a striving toward an impossible ideal, and empty signifiers are the discursive forms such strivings represent. An example in the case being studied in this book is the idea of sustainable development, which, through its all-encompassing nature, represents an impossibility. Sustainable development promises to deliver environmental conservation to all parties willing to abide by its essence, essentially representing a commitment to protect sovereignty, while redistributing wealth from the North to the South, conserving the environment while promoting continued economic growth and free-market capitalism. Through the emptiness of such a concept certain parties have been able to control meanings and connotations associated with the environmental movement. Under this construct, competing actors present a diverse array of political objectives, aimed at fulfilling this impossible task, in order to seize the discourse and the many forms of practice that result from it.⁴

This process inevitably leads to social antagonisms. It is these social antagonisms, however, that are the essence of politics, and, hence, worth examining. As social entities compete to shape the narrative, or the social boundaries of any particular political sector, this process invariably challenges and reshapes identities. These antagonisms prevent the full realization of identities (of both the antagonist and the antagonizer), and thus force actors to leverage divergent resources in efforts to affirm their identities. In doing so, they construct political frontiers which aim to set them apart from others. Navigating how this process takes place is critical for understanding the processes undergirding private authority in environmental governance. Proceeding in this way also allows the examiner to show how political-social spaces are structured into different subject positions, and how resources are wielded by actors in their attempts at gaining and maintaining leverage within these spaces. This approach can be justified methodologically because it aims to explain the competition and cooperation between actors, as it took place within a specific sector over time. This is essential for understanding not just the dynamics of the field but what is at stake and how actors go about pursuing it.

However, as this book also seeks to explain why some actors were able to wield private authority more effectively than others, the discourse analysis will be supplemented by process tracing. Process tracing is a particularly effective tool at converting a historical narrative into an analytical causal explanation and thus will be used to bolster the theoretical propositions laid out in the book.⁵ In order to carry out such a project, there are a few critical steps that need to be highlighted. First, the sector within which private governance is being conducted must be properly contextualized. Rather than focusing on governance dynamics in a vacuum, as they exist during one independent period of time, this book will examine the process by which private authority evolved over time, and the dynamic ways in which it shifted during that period, within a specific sector, and sectoral fields (the environment and forests and fisheries, respectively).

Second, and drawing from the first, this book will present a more sociologically based account of private authority. To begin with, authority does not just exist as something that is “out there” to be attained by an actor. Nor is it a commodity traded between actors. Rather, it is a social process that builds over time. It must be traced from its point of emergence, through to the time of the study. Additionally, instead of focusing on the direct relationships between the governed and the governor, the full network of relationships that prop up the governor and their authority must be examined as well. This diverts from traditional forms that structure private governance primarily as consisting of a competitive and conflictual, hierarchically structured relationship between two actors (governor-governed). Rather, it considers both the conflictual/competitive side of the many relationships that go into private authority and the cooperative/supportive components of those relationships as well. For example, as will be discussed in this work, such an approach is required in order to explain how the FSC emerged into a subject position between two networks wherein they could exercise and maintain private authority. The position they came to occupy between the two networks, and the authority they wielded, was not solely between them and the industries they tried to regulate. Nor is the story limited to the moral authority they held as a socially purposed environmental organization. Rather, it includes a complex set of networked relationships between the FSC and the targets of governance, as well as between the FSC and the many Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) that supported the FSC. These ENGOs viewed the FSC as an extension of their own projects, and their own identities. The FSC, however, saw the linking of environmentalism and industry as its role and as crucial in achieving its objective and thus emerged as a network connector. This subject position is what was required to find a common code (i.e., language) that could be adapted to both sides of the network. This book seeks to unravel this complex social phenomenon in order to better understand it. Such a platform will allow for a more comprehensive explanation of private authority, sources of such authority, and how actors leverage these in difficult political terrain to connect networks.

There are two substantive parts to this book. The first is the theory-building component. This consists of framing the discursive terrain within which the private environmental actors under investigation operated. The second is undertaking a comparative, qualitative case study within the theoretical frame built, while leveraging a standard quantitative procedure for social network analysis. The aim of this methodological approach is to achieve a deep understanding that emphasizes the relationship between historical-social context, attributions of meaning, and political outcomes, or, in other words, to show how actors operating within the macro context of network society were able to strategically navigate through discursive terrain to a middle position from where they could wield private authority—while also leveraging the powers of quantitative techniques to substantiate findings.

The empirical materials will be assessed through content analysis, as well as considered via process tracing. The comparative, qualitative case study design provides the possibility for in-depth analysis, or understanding, of the case, as well as for explanation (or broad causal claims) tied to theory. Proceeding in such a way provides a means by which both the theory and the analytical frame can be developed and applied to future cases. Content analysis, for its part, represents a common method because it can effectively connect socially constructed meaning and action. Process tracing can then make the additional connection between the aforementioned and political outcomes. The section that follows will explain this approach.

The aim of this methodological approach is twofold: (1) to expand upon current understandings of private authority by adding a thick social analysis to the phenomenon and (2) to explain how social positioning relates to the effectiveness of private governors attempting to wield private authority. The ultimate goal is to explain the emergence of private governors into subject positions within the forest and the fisheries sectors from where they could wield private authority, and, then, to explain the social forces underlying private authority and how those forces lead to varying levels of effectiveness among varying private actors. This work thus aims at a thicker, more interpretive explanation of private authority that can supplement those that currently exist.⁶