Fairtrade Governance and Producer Voices: Stronger or Silent?

Title: Fairtrade Governance and Producer Voices: Stronger or Silent?
Summary:

While recent changes to Fairtrade’s governance structures aim to facilitate ‘stronger voices’ for producers, relatively little is known about the impact on individual farmers. This paper considers the nature of participation and representation, assessing the role of FLO in representing the interests of its members through an exploration of collaborative governance.I utilize Fung and Wright’s (2003) framework of Empowered Participatory Governance to explore the nature of individual participation in Fairtrade governance. This paper finds that, while FLO has demonstrated a commitment to improving producer participation and its governance structures appear to be evolving accordingly, much remains to be done in order to ensure that individual producers are genuinely engaged in decision-making and have a voice. The concept of countervailing power (Fung and Wright, 2003) may provide a means of achieving this.

TO CITE THIS ARTICLE:

Shannon Sutton 2013 Fairtrade Governance and Producer Voices: Stronger or Silent? Social Enterprise Journal 9 (1)

Language: English
Type: Journal
Academic Publication: yes
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