The Power of Evaluators: Transparency and Accountability in the Governance of Standard Setting

A significant problem for the governance of evaluation and certification is constituted by the fact that while the vast majority of technical standards are defined by supranational or even global agencies, their application and effects exert at regional or even local levels. What guarantees transparency and accountability in the certification chain between the global and the local? The economic and social regulation has increasingly used the instruments of “evaluation”, “certification” and "standard setting" to assess the quality of activities, actors and relationships, in order to solve problems, to ensure compliance with rules and to prevent the illegal exploitation of natural and human resources and the violation of human rights. Standard setting and certification practices have been spreading in primarily two ways: that of binding norms, through the governmental delegation of regulatory powers to independent or semi-independent technical agencies, and that of non-binding norms, through the tacit agreement on the part of public authorities to abide by "private regulation" (voluntary international standard agencies and rating agencies). This latter phenomenon is becoming increasingly influential on national and international public policies and programs (Bartley, 2011). The effects of these anonymous powers are not always clear, especially if we examine the recent default of certain European states, the ongoing global financial crises and the attempt of European Union to regulate rating agencies. How might be conceptualize the certification agencies’ accountability and transparency? When and how can private standard setting and certification entities be considered accountable and therefore reliable? And to whom? When standard setting governance is not open to full external scrutiny and negotiation, and when accountability is weak or absent, the certification may be used, or viewed as, not just as a strategy of solving problems but also as a strategy of blame avoidance or blame shifting.