The politics of accountability in global sustainable commodity governance: Dilemmas of institutional competition and convergence

The accountability of market-driven sustainability governance has long been controversial, reflecting the deeply political processes through which accountability contests shape governance transformations. Drawing on illustrative examples from internationally traded agro-commodity sectors in the critical case of Indonesia, this paper examines the contested processes of accountability that have accompanied a recent period of institutional change in sustainability governance. Amidst rising critiques of global certification, there has been a parallel expansion of governance approaches that prioritise capability development over regulatory enforcement and engage more intensively with governments in commodity-producing countries. As alternative governance models gain influence, tensions between competing governance stakeholders and agendas are mirrored and amplified through parallel accountability contests, in which distributional conflicts between global and local stakeholders are intensified by pressures to adopt contentious systems of compliance verification. While accountability gaps associated with contrasting institutional models produce strong pressures for partial institutional convergence, such convergence coexists with new forms of institutional fragmentation, as competition between global and national certification expands to encompass competition with localised capacity-building and jurisdictional approaches. Analysis highlights the often-neglected role of accountability politics in shaping institutional change, while raising pressing questions about the distributional implications of contemporary shifts away from global certification governance models. © 2024 The Author(s). Global Policy published by Durham University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.