In recent decades, voluntary business practices, consumer preferences, and market incentives have become seeds of global governance. When firms adopt ethical standards, when consumers choose “better” products, and when markets reward those choices, these voluntary self-governance practices can mature into international law and binding frameworks. In other words: businesses and consumers do not merely respond to law. They often help create it.
Scholars of global governance have observed that corporate best practices, pioneered by non-state actors, can play a distinct role in transnational regulation. In fact, best pratices are “a unique mode of global governance … basing claims of political authority on existing practices.” In this way, private-sector standard-setting, self-regulation and certification schemes can fill a gap where formal state regulation is weak or fragmented.
Consumer choice in particular has emerged as a crucial mediator: ethical consumption, brand pressure, and reputational concerns push companies to adopt higher standards, which then form the basis of standard-setting regimes and eventually feed into treaties, conventions, and regulation. Indeed, the report Consuming International Law explores how everyday consumers respond to corporate behavior and how this in turn influences international law.
This interplay – voluntary business practices, consumer demand, market signalling, and eventual normative codification – suggests that global governance is not purely a matter of inter-state treaty-making. Rather, the private sector, markets and consumers are agents of change. They create the prototypes, signal the demand, test the norms, and eventually help bind them into international frameworks. The logic goes like this: 1) An industry identifies an ethical concern and voluntarily adopts a best practice or certification. 2) Consumers increasingly demand these better practices, altering competitive dynamics and spreading the practice through the market. 3) The voluntary standard becomes widely adopted across industries, supplying a de facto benchmark. 4) States or intergovernmental organizations incorporate those benchmarks into law, treaty or regulation – thereby transforming voluntary practice into formal legal obligation. 5) The cycle then continues: firms adapt to formal law, consumers adjust demand, and governance is reinforced.
The marketplace can lead, and law often follows.
Five historic examples illustrate this dynamic
- Sustainable forestry certification and timber legality regulation – In the 1990s, the private sector (with NGOs) developed voluntary forest-certification regimes such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), in response to consumer and NGO pressure around deforestation and illegal logging. Certification provided companies with a market advantage and consumers with an ethical choice: “timber from responsibly managed forests”. Over time, these voluntary practices gained legitimacy, and by the 2000s regulatory frameworks followed, such as the EU Timber Regulation and the 2008 amendments to the U.S. Lacey Act imposing legality-due-diligence obligations on timber imports. Thus a voluntary marketplace standard turned into binding law. Consumer choice played a role: retailers and buyers preferred “certified” wood, which created competitive pressure within the industry to adopt certification, making the standard more widespread and visible, and thus easier for regulators to codify.
- Conflict minerals and supply-chain due diligence – A growing number of companies in the electronics and jewelry sectors began voluntarily auditing their supply chains for tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from conflict zones in response to NGO campaigns and consumer concern. As these voluntary due-diligence frameworks took hold, regulators followed: the U.S. Dodd Frank Act required listed companies to disclose use of conflict minerals. Later the EU adopted the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation which entered into force 2021.
- Pesticide controls in agriculture – Following the public outcry over DDT, the pesticide industry began confronting the moral weight of its own success. Facing public concern over contamination and worker safety, major firms launched voluntary stewardship programs and safer-use training long before governments intervened. As consumers and retailers demanded cleaner food systems, these practices spread through the market and later informed international frameworks like the Rotterdam Convention, which codified many of the same principles.
- Voluntary labor codes in apparel/footwear industry – After global outrage over sweatshops, brands like Nike and Reebok adopted voluntary labor codes, independent audits, and NGO partnerships to rebuild trust. Consumers made clear that style without ethics would not sell. Over time, these voluntary norms inspired the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and new national due-diligence laws.
- Protecting the ozone layer – By the mid-1980s, mounting evidence linked chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to the depletion of the ozone layer, turning scientific concern into public alarm. In response, industry leaders like DuPont began phasing out CFC production and investing in safer alternatives – even before governments imposed restrictions. Their decisions were not purely regulatory concessions but moral and market calculations: consumers no longer wanted products that harmed the atmosphere, and brands risked association with planetary damage. This voluntary shift helped create the technical and political feasibility for the Montreal Protocol, which formalized a global ban.
When we think of global governance, we often imagine states sitting around negotiation tables, hammering out binding treaties. But the above pattern reminds us: markets and consumers matter. Voluntary business practices are not simply precursors or anticipatory acts; they are inputs into governance. They help build precedent, shape expectations, create the “logic of the possible”, and reduce the cost and uncertainty of regulation. Consumers act as auditors: their choices reward ethical practices and punish laggards, creating market pressure which firms respond to – and in doing so, they signal to regulators that a particular standard is feasible and economically viable.
The evolution of global governance is increasingly polycentric: a mix of state, private, consumer, NGO and market actors. In such a milieu, the private sector and consumers are not only participants – they are catalysts.
The story of global governance is not just one of states and diplomats – it is also a story of shelves and shoppers, boardrooms and benchmarks. When businesses voluntarily raise their standards, when consumers reward that, and when markets shift, those practices often become the foundation for law. For civil society and business together, the task is to recognize this dynamic and work in concert: designing voluntary standards that matter, ensuring consumer empowerment, and helping convert market-driven practice into durable governance. In that way, the private sector, markets and consumers don’t just adapt to global governance – they drive it.