IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/36138.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Standardising through concepts: scientific experts and the international development of the HACCP Food Safety Standard

Author

Listed:
  • Demortain, David

Abstract

This paper deals with international standard-setting. Using the HACCP food safety standard as the basis of discussion, this paper considers the influence of scientific experts on the regulatory process. What is usually referred to as the diffusion or dissemination of soft or voluntary standards is here explained in terms of transferability of a regulatory concept. It is the ability of scientific experts to transform practices into a universal concept and, conversely, to develop technologies for users which translate the concept into practice, that explains why this reference has travelled so well across countries, industry sectors and historical periods. Scientific experts played a translating role between standard-setters and groups of practical users. This highlights the counter-intuitive distribution of power in standard-setting: while experts dominate the development of generic rules, official rule-makers (such as governments) assert their authority by developing alternative technologies for the appropriation of the standard by users and, sometimes, allow the latter to deviate from experts' universal concepts where these are shown to be problematic.

Suggested Citation

  • Demortain, David, 2007. "Standardising through concepts: scientific experts and the international development of the HACCP Food Safety Standard," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36138, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:36138
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/36138/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Haas, Peter M., 1992. "Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-35, January.
    2. Finnemore, Martha & Sikkink, Kathryn, 1998. "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 887-917, October.
    3. François-Xavier Dudouet & Delphine Mercier & Antoine Vion, 2006. "Politiques internationales de normalisation," Post-Print halshs-02136016, HAL.
    4. Finnemore, Martha, 1993. "International organizations as teachers of norms: the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cutural Organization and science policy," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(4), pages 565-597, October.
    5. Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic, 1998. "Exporting the American Model," Post-Print hal-01892020, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Susanne Wengle, 2016. "When experimentalist governance meets science‐based regulations; the case of food safety regulations," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(3), pages 262-283, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Per-Olof Busch & Helge Jörgens & Kerstin Tews, 2005. "The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Instruments: The Making of a New International Environmental Regime," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 598(1), pages 146-167, March.
    2. Arie Krampf, 2013. "The Life Cycles of Competing Policy Norms - Localizing European and Developmental Central Banking Ideas," KFG Working Papers p0049, Free University Berlin.
    3. Bethke, Felix S., 2016. "Cultural Bias in the Perception of Foreign-Policy Events," Global Cooperation Research Papers 14, University of Duisburg-Essen, Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21).
    4. Hoyoon Jung, 2019. "The Evolution of Social Constructivism in Political Science: Past to Present," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    5. Mai'a K. Davis Cross, 2015. "The Limits of Epistemic Communities: EU Security Agencies," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(1), pages 90-100.
    6. M. Peterson, 2010. "How the indigenous got seats at the UN table," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 197-225, June.
    7. Leuze, Kathrin & Brand, Tilman & Jakobi, Anja P. & Martens, Kerstin & Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth, 2008. "Analysing the two-level game: international and national determinants of change in education policy making," TranState Working Papers 72, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    8. Magnus Benzie & Åsa Persson, 2019. "Governing borderless climate risks: moving beyond the territorial framing of adaptation," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 369-393, October.
    9. Perri 6 & Eva Heims & Martha Prevezer, 2023. "How did international economic regulation survive the last period of deglobalization?," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(1), pages 272-289, January.
    10. Mitchell, Ronald B., 2011. "Transparency for governance: The mechanisms and effectiveness of disclosure-based and education-based transparency policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1882-1890, September.
    11. Sundewall, Jesper & Sahlin-Andersson, Kerstin, 2006. "Translations of health sector SWAps--A comparative study of health sector development cooperation in Uganda, Zambia and Bangladesh," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 277-287, May.
    12. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2ilfdosc5a9umpcja7bbsturuq is not listed on IDEAS
    13. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ilfdosc5a9umpcja7bbsturuq is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Nilsson, Adriana, 2017. "Making norms to tackle global challenges: The role of Intergovernmental Organisations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 171-181.
    15. Fikresus Amahazion, 2016. "Epistemic Communities, Human Rights, and the Global Diffusion of Legislation against the Organ Trade," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-31, October.
    16. Janet Bercovitz & Maryann Feldman, 2008. "Academic Entrepreneurs: Organizational Change at the Individual Level," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 69-89, February.
    17. Tanja A. Börzel & Thomas Risse, 2009. "The Transformative Power of Europe: The European Union and the Diffusion of Ideas," KFG Working Papers p0001, Free University Berlin.
    18. Jonas Tallberg & Eva Erman & Markus Furendal & Johannes Geith & Mark Klamberg & Magnus Lundgren, 2023. "The Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Next Steps for Empirical and Normative Research," Papers 2305.11528, arXiv.org.
    19. Katherine M. Beall, 2024. "Empowering to constrain: Procedural checks in international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 443-468, September.
    20. David Benjamin Weyrauch & Christoph Valentin Steinert, 2022. "Instrumental or intrinsic? Human rights alignment in intergovernmental organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 89-115, January.
    21. Federico Maria Ferrara & Jörg S Haas & Andrew Peterson & Thomas Sattler, 2022. "Exports vs. Investment: How Public Discourse Shapes Support for External Imbalances," Post-Print hal-02569351, HAL.
    22. May-Britt Stumbaum, 2015. "The diffusion of norms in security-related fields: views from China, India and the EU," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 331-347, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:36138. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.