Private Governance and the Global South

This book explores how industry associations in Brazil’s soy and sugarcane sectors influence the development of global sustainability norms, challenging the traditional view of Southern actors as passive rule-takers. Bridging the fields of sustainability, trade, and transnational governance, this book develops and refines the concepts of strategic inconsistency and GVC interlegality to explain how Global South actors navigate and reshape the complex regulatory systems governing global trade. Through detailed empirical analysis, it reveals how Brazilian agro-industry organizations strategically engage with overlapping governance initiatives to assert influence, balance domestic and global demands, and advance their interests. Offering a timely contribution to debates on the trade–sustainability nexus, this book repositions the Global South as a key player in defining the future of sustainable globalization. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of international political economy, sustainability governance, and global trade who seek to understand how power and agency are being reconfigured across global value chains.