Projects:

I am working on several projects. The key project, also the subject of my recent book, The Voluntary Environmentalists (co-authored with Matt Potoski), examines the varying diffusion rates and efficacy of voluntary environmental programs across countries and within the United States. In addition to doing a bunch of papers, Matt and I are editing a book, Voluntary Programs: A Club Theory Perspective, that employs the theoretical framework outlined in The Voluntary Environmentalists to systematically study how institutional design affects program efficacy across voluntary programs. Thanks to financial support from the Center of International Business Education and Reserach and the Lindenberg Center, both at the University of Washington, we organized a a workshop at the University of Washington in June 2007 for the authors to present their drafts and receive feedback. The authors have turned in their chapters and the manuscript is under review.

My other active projects include:

1. NGOs and Non-Profits:
NGOs influence the policies of governments and firms via public politics as well as by private politics. There is no agreed definition of NGOs; scholars tend to treat them (incorrectly so in my opinion) as actors that are guided by normative concerns, not instrumental reasons. By and large, the NGO research program tends to suffer from a selection bias where scholars tend to study successful actions against "bad" governments and "bad" firms by "good" NGOs. In an attempt to provide analytical clarity to the NGO research, Susan Sell and I published an article (International Studies Quarterly, 2004) comparing the strategies of business and NGO networks in the field of intellectual property rights and suggested that they were infact quite similar. Following up on this argument, Erica Johnson and I published a theoretical paper (Policy Sciences 2007) that examines the NGO Politics research program from a collective action perspective. To push forward these ideas, I am co-editing three volumes over the next two years. Mary Kay Gugerty and I are co-editing two volumes (and holding two conferences at UW campus for the contributors). The first volume, NGO Accountability Clubs: Self Regulation in the Nonprofit and the Nogovernmental Sectors, examines self-regulation in the NGO sector and how it compares with self-regualtion in the for-profit sector along key analytical dimensions. The second volume, Revisiting Advocacy Organizations: A Collective Action Perspective, systematically examines the extent to which the firm analogy can be helpful for the study of NGOs. In 2009, I will edit another volume tentatively entitled Private Politics to examine conditions under which NGOs seek to influence firms directly instead of via the public policy process, and the conditions under which such direct advocacy is successful. Finally, I want to explore the phenomenon of NGO self-regulation in the Indian context. Specifically, I am interested in exploring the institutional drivers of this phenomenon and how they vary across sectors.

2. Trade and Foreign Direct Investment:
I am interested in studying how trade and foreign direct investment influence the politics and institutions of host, developing countries. A recent paper with Matt Potoski (International Studies Quarterly,, 2007) examines the influence of the foreign investor's country-of-origin on the host country's ISO 14001 adoption. Another paper with Xun Cao (under review) examines the role of trade competitiveness on ISO 9000 diffusion. Xun and I are doing a series of papers that look at the role of trade competitiveness on a variety of other indicators. John Ahlquist and I have done two papers studying conditions under which foreign direct investment leads developing country governments to supply institutions that protect property rights. Brian Greenhill and I recently presented a paper that examines how bilateral trade influences human rights. We are planning to do a couple of more papers that look at the role of bilateral trade and investment in diffusing other types of rights such as labor rights (with Lyna Mosley as a co-author) and human rights.

3. Corporate Social Responsibility.
I am planning to start work on a major project on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The first leg of this project will examine CSR in a comparative perspective. The basic intuition is that is there are different varieties of capitalism, there ought to be different varieties of CSR that emanate from it. The demand for CSR and specific ways in which it is sought to be supplied should vary across different types of capitalist systems. Thus, I seek to examine the institutional foundations of CSR to understand CSR in a comparative persepctive. In the second leg, I will examine CSR in the Indian context. I am interested in exploring how the conception and the practice of CSR varies across industrial groups, and how it has changed over generations.



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