1 - Introduction

Summary

Chapter 1 describes the scope, purpose, and main argument of the book. This chapter opens with vivid field research vignettes that present the reader with puzzles regarding the suboptimal implementation of market-driven sustainability governance in the coffee sector. It then motivates the choice of coffee as empirical focus and defines the book’s scope of analysis as centered on transnational market-driven regulatory governance. By introducing the book’s research questions and structure, it explains its conceptualization of effectiveness and lays out its contribution to the literature by setting this approach apart from previous efforts. To set the empirical scene, it provides a short overview of the global coffee sector and its players. It then describes the selection of private sustainability standards and country cases, as well as the main data sources and research methods. It closes by outlining the analytical argument and findings, and linking these to a roadmap of the following chapters.