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Voluntary Standard Setting: Drivers and Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Craig N. Murphy
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Extract

This essay is about the drivers and consequences of changes in the voluntary consensus standard-setting (VCSS) system, the part of the contemporary global governance system that most of us encounter the most frequently, but that we rarely even notice. The VCSS system is made up of thousands of “technical committees” in which hundreds of thousands of experts (most of them engineers) create standards that constantly affect our lives—from the unique number that identifies this journal, to the electronic codes that translated my keystrokes into the words you are reading at the moment, to the rules governing the supply chain for the “fair trade” coffee you may have in a mug by your side. Historian Mark Mazower calls the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the organization that stands at the apex of the largest network of groups that sponsor these technical committees, “perhaps the most influential private organization in the contemporary world, with a vast and largely invisible influence over most aspects of how we live, from the shape of our household appliances to the colors and smells that surround us.”

Type
Roundtable: Change and Continuity in Global Governance
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 443 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2015 

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References

NOTES

1 Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The Rise and Fall of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), p. 102.

2 OpenStand began in 2012 as an initiative of five major standard-setting organizations involved in the fields of “Innovation and Borderless Commerce,” namely, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the Internet Society. “Leading Global Standards Organizations Endorse ‘OpenStand’ Principles that Drive Innovation and Borderless Commerce,” August 23, 2012, open-stand.org/openstandlaunch/.

3 ISEAL Alliance website, “About Us,” www.isealalliance.org/about-us.

4 Andrew Updegrove, an attorney who has been involved with more than 100 such consortia maintains and updates a list of almost 1,000 current VCSS organizations, the majority of which are such company consortia. “Standard Setting Organizations and Standards List,” www.consortiuminfo.org/links/#.VZFzcWCLhgv. The ISO network consists of about 160 national-level, standard-setting bodies. ISEAL includes about twenty full-member bodies. OpenStand is made up of both organizational and individual members. Updegrove lists about seventy “significant” open standards and open source organizations, many, but not all, of which endorse OpenStand.

5 Wirth, David A., “The International Organization for Standardization: Private Voluntary Standards as Swords and Shields,” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 36, no. 1 (2009), pp. 79–102 Google Scholar.

6 Craig N. Murphy and JoAnne Yates, The International Organization for Standardization: Global Governance through Voluntary Consensus (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2009), p. 2.

7 Jean-François Rischard, High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

8 Richard Samans, Klaus Schwab, and Mark Malloch Brown, eds., Global Redesign: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2010).

9 Yates, JoAnne and Murphy, Craig N., “From Setting National Standards to Coordinating International Standards: The Formation of the ISO,” Business and Economic History On-Line 4 (2006)Google Scholar, www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/yatesandmurphy.pdf.

10 Murphy, Craig N., “Globalizing Standardization: The International Organization for Standardization,” Comparativ—Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 23, no. 4/5 (2013), pp. 137–53Google Scholar.

11 Craig N. Murphy and JoAnne Yates, “ISO 26000, Alternative Standards, and the ‘Social Movement of Engineers’ Involved with Standard Setting,” in Stefano Ponte, Peter Gibbon, and Jakob Vestergaard, eds., Governing through Standards: Origins, Drivers, and Limitations (Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 167–78.

12 The more general argument is made in Murphy and Yates, The International Organization for Standardization, pp. 10–11.

13 Robert Tavernor, Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 131.

14 International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations Bulletin No. 6: Conversion Tables: Inches-Millimeters (August 1934).

15 Jeffrey A. Hart, Technology, Television, and Competition: The Politics of Digital TV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 84–97.

16 American, British, and German perspectives on this conflict can be found in “Introducing Industrial Standards,” Comments on the Argentine Trade 2, no. 4 (November, 1922), p. 21Google Scholar; “Memorandum in Regard to the Work of the British Engineering Standards Association in Furtherance of British Export Trade,” Institution of Civil Engineers, Holdings of the BSI Formerly in the Science Museum, Part 3, Envelope 5; and Wölker, Thomas, “Der Wettlauf um die Verbreitung nationaler Normen im Ausland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg und die Gründung der ISA aus der Sicht deutscher Quellen,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 80, no. 4 (1993), p. 490Google Scholar.

17 José Luciano Dias, História da Normalização Brasileira (São Paulo: ABNT, 2011), pp. 47–53.

18 Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011).

19 JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy, “The Role of Firms in Industrial Standards Setting: Participation, Process, and Balance,” MIT Sloan School Working Paper 5124-14, February 17, 2015.

20 Ibid.

21 Robert Coutts McWilliam, “The Evolution of British Standards” (thesis for Doctor of Philosophy, Department of History, University of Reading, September, 2002), pp. 48–51.

22 International Electrotechnical Commission, Fourth Annual Report, Publication No. 24, August 1913, p. 24.

23 “American Engineering Standards Committee,” in Power: Power Generation, Transmission, Application and Their Attendant Services in All the Industries 49, no. 9 (March 4, 1919), p. 337Google Scholar.

24 Yates and Murphy, “From Setting National Standards to Coordinating International Standards.”

25 Maistre, Charles Le, “Summary of the Work of BESA,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 82 (March, 1919), p. 252Google Scholar.

26 Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998); Mansbridge, Jane et al. , “The Place of Self-Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy,” Journal of Political Philosophy 18, no. 1 (2010), pp. 64–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 On the longer pattern, see Murphy and Yates, “ISO 26000.”

28 Craig N. Murphy, “Globalizing Standardization.”

29 “Sir Tim Berners-Lee Hopes Peace Will Be the Lasting Legacy of the World Wide Web,” Drum, September 14, 2012, www.thedrum.com/news/2012/09/14/sir-tim-berners-lee-hopes-peace-will-be-lasting-legacy-world-wide-web#wKcodIEx8g7x4jSg.99.

30 DIN German Institute for Standardization, Economic Benefits of Standardization: Final Report and Practical Examples (Berlin: Beuth Verlag, 2000).

31 Murphy and Yates, The International Organization for Standardization, pp. 46–67.

32 Toby Poston, “Thinking Inside the Box,” BBC News, April 25, 2006, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4943382.stm.

33 Rose George, Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013).

34 Daniel M. Bernhofen, Zouheir El-Sahli, and Richard Kneller, “Estimating the Effects of the Container Revolution on World Trade,” CESifo Working Paper No. 4136, Category: Trade Policy, February 2013, p. 1.

35 Historians of containerization, for example, have ultimately had to hunt for the records of standardization—usually in the basements or attics of engineers who served as chairs or secretaries of the relevant technical committees. The records are typically voluminous, and they have been kept in perfect order. See Murphy and Yates, The International Organization for Standardization, p. 55.