Global private governance: Lessons from a national model of setting standards in accounting

In sum, global governance can surely be improved through administrative law. Our findings suggest, however, that an assessment of the likely effectiveness of specific administrative law measures - that is, their effectiveness in solving perceived problems rather than in offering symbolic satisfaction to momentary critics - requires careful empirical analysis of the causes of those problems in the particular realm of governance that is at stake. The influence of the stakeholders in transnational regulation, for instance, may well be institutionally balanced by ensuring effective input from all stakeholders; yet, we caution that the nominal establishment of some of the standard procedures to achieve such greater balance by itself may not be suitable in the global governance of complex, technical issue areas. At the same time, a number of institutional changes and incentives might be quite effective, such as creating an independent source of information about the private agent's work, or changing the agent's funding structure.