Negotiating Authority in Global Biofuel Governance: Brazil and the EU in the WTO

Globalization is changing the nature and practices of global governance, including those relating to governance of large-scale environmental change. A complex array of actors and institutions now frames and seeks to manage environmental problems in diverse ways, resulting in intersecting spheres of public and private authority that shape governance outcomes. We interpret authority here as the capacity to define the content of rules and norms that shape social, economic, and political processes.1 Our interest is in how the state, still a dominant actor in global environmental governance, navigates shifting spheres of governance authority in promoting its own policy agenda. In assessing such a role for the state, we focus here on global biofuels governance and the Brazilian state. (...)