This chapter examines fifty years of state-led industrial reform in the Indian tea industry with an eye to how, where, and by whom notions of transparency were deployed and contested. For nearly 100 years, from the mid 1800s to Indian independence in 1947, tea was produced in India and shipped to London for valuation, auctioning, blending, and consumption. In the early 1950s, India’s new independent bureaucracy worked to make visible the workings of the colonial tea industry. They expanded India’s tea auction infrastructure, including the storage and transportation of tea. Central to this challenge to the opacity of colonial governance was the establishment of small, governable regional auction centers across India. By the end of the twentieth century, however, these regional auction centers had come to be seen by Indian bureaucrats and regulators as sites of invisible, corrupt dealings. This chapter, then, juxtaposes post-independence reforms of the 1950s with more recent attempts to re-spatialize the tea trade: to move it out of regional auction centers and onto a nationwide trading platform, all in the name of transparency.

In this chapter, I consider how transparency and gold are established and maintained as “global values” and how actors differently positioned within gold markets seek to align them, with greater and lesser degrees of success. I trace how this happens in three clusters of transparency projects: certification schemes and voluntary frameworks for mining companies; efforts to use blockchain technologies to increase transparency in the supply chain; and efforts to verify (and perform the verification of) gold’s presence in European central banks, especially the Deutsche Bundesbank. Exploring these specific sites where transparency and gold convene, both supporting and tugging against each other, allows us to consider transparency from a different angle than is found in many other discussions, viewing gold and transparency as engaged in competitive processes of value-making (and unmaking).

As digital technologies for tracking and tracing mineral commodities continue to expand, this chapter evaluates the role of blockchain-inspired systems and the organizations promoting digital certification technologies in mineral supply chain management. Drawing on research conducted in the cobalt mines of Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in mining sites affiliated with De Beers’ GemFair program in Sierra Leone, the chapter explores two key themes. First, it examines how transparency shapes both cobalt –an essential component for enhancing lithium battery performance – and diamonds – an emblem of hyper-consumption – within the broader digital transformation of the extractive industries. Second, it considers this digital turn as an effort to establish disintermediated trust in certification mechanisms formerly reliant on third-party verification. The chapter argues that, while digital transparency is presented as the pinnacle of technological accountability, it simultaneously operates through practices of concealment.

Replete with documentary artefacts, traceability systems, forensic testing, and inspections, organic certification is emblematic of technomoral aspirations and material interventions undertaken in the name of transparency. Based on research conducted in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, this chapter explores how organic certification becomes established as a regime of truth through semiotic technologies mobilized to make agricultural production transparent and legible. Probing a question I have frequently encountered – “Is it really organic?” – the chapter attends to what such a question reveals about transparency’s contemporary power. By examining how paper and digital record-keeping, as well as tags and traceability, come together in organic certification, it shows how transparency projects work to make real and to establish thresholds of truth for the objects that they purport only to observe.

This chapter explores bias and fairness in Swedish employment testing from legal, historical, and practical perspectives. Swedish labor laws, influenced by trade unions and the welfare state, emphasize non-discrimination under the Discrimination Act. The law prohibits bias based on sex, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and age, and requires preventive action. It is enforced by the Equality Ombudsman and Labour Court. Although validity evidence is not explicitly required, selection decisions should be based on a job analysis. No proof of intent is required in discrimination claims, and the burden of proof is shared. Quotas are banned, but positive action is allowed for gender balance when qualifications are equal. Psychological test certification is voluntary in Sweden; the Psychological Association offers guidelines on validity, reliability, and fairness. However, these are not mandatory, and many employers develop their own policies. International standards offer best-practice guidance for fair assessments, including for emerging artificial intelligence tools.

Use case 1 in Chapter 4 explores the regulation of MDTs in the context of mental health and well-being under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR), the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), and the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation. The analysis reveals that data protection issues in this sector are not primarily due to deficiencies in the law, but rather stem from significant compliance weaknesses, particularly in applications extending beyond the traditional medical sector. Consumer mental health and well-being devices could greatly benefit from co-regulatory measures, such as a sector-specific data protection certification. Additionally, legislators need to tackle the issue of manufacturers circumventing MDR certification due to ambiguities in the classification model. The EU’s regulatory approach to non-medical Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) within medical devices legislation is highlighted as a potential blueprint and should be advocated in ongoing global policy discussions concerning neurotechnologies.

This chapter draws all the threads together, highlighting the profound impact that artificial intelligence is likely to have on the landscape of intellectual property. It summarizes the core arguments of the book and sets out the author’s proposed strategies for adapting intellectual property law to the age of AI. By embracing these approaches, the chapter argues, one can ensure that intellectual property law continues to protect human creativity and innovation in the digital age.

Coffee has arguably been the essential product of fair trade activism. This chapter analyzes how earlier campaigns to promote fair trade around coffee eventually evolved into the practice of certification. Certification has been the most visible and economically impactful aspect of fair trade activism. At the same time, it has been criticized for introducing a predominantly economic and non-transformative perspective into the movement. Based on a new analysis of the emergence of certification first in the Dutch organization Max Havelaar and then in the context of international cooperation of fair trade organizations, this chapter demonstrates that certification has to be regarded not just as a means to sell more products, but also as a tool to gain more political and economic leverage. The introduction of fair trade certification was part of a broader trend in which fair trade activism became more professional and engaged new stakeholders such as supermarkets.

This second chapter on transnational approaches to grand corruption looks at other ways to pressure corrupt governments when internal controls like the judiciary or auditors don’t work. It looks at individual or “smart” sanctions for human rights violations or grand corruption in the US, EU, UK, Canada and elsewhere. It then considers cases based on extraterritorial jurisdiction, private standards and certifications, and conditions placed by international development banks and agencies as sources of pressure and redress.

Chapter 9 explores regulatory compliance, enforcement and certification. It analyses the vital role of enforcement action and how rules aimed at influencing human and institutional behaviour are translated into social reality. It draws attention to the human interaction that takes place during encounters with regulatory enforcement officials and regulators. We discuss how ‘risk-based’ approaches to regulation can be understood and operationalised. It then touches upon the investigatory powers of public regulators, and the nature, purpose and variety of regulatory sanctions. Finally, it examines the role of ‘private’ bodies and other ‘regulatory intermediaries’ in certifying that a regulatee’s activities complies regulatory standards which purport to offer consumers, as primary beneficiaries, ‘assurance’ of the quality of the resulting outputs.

Although the 13 United States courts of appeals are the final word on 99 percent of all federal cases, there is no detailed account of how these courts operate. How do judges decide which decisions are binding precedents and which are not? Who decides whether appeals are argued orally? What administrative structures do these courts have? The answers to these and hundreds of other questions are largely unknown, not only to lawyers and legal academics but also to many within the judiciary itself. Written and Unwritten is the first book to provide an inside look at how these courts operate. An unprecedented contribution to the field of judicial administration, the book collects the differing local rules and internal procedures of each court of appeals. In-depth interviews of the chief judges of all 13 circuits and surveys of all clerks of court reveal previously undisclosed practices and customs.

This chapter describes professional issues within clinical psychology. It includes summaries of several national conferences on training, the development of the doctor of psychology (PsyD) degree, and the establishment of the clinical scientist model, the scientist-practitioner model, and the practitioner-scholar model of clinical training. It also outlines the contours of professional regulation including via certification and licensure by state clinical psychology boards, and the American Board of Professional Psychology. It also discusses the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association, and regulation of clinical psychologists’ behavior by the APA ethics committee and state licensing boards. The chapter tells the story of how clinical psychologists gained the right to practice psychotherapy independently and to receive insurance coverage for mental health services, summarizes the impact of changes in the economics of mental health service delivery, and provides the latest information on the controversy over clinicians’ right to prescribe medication. There is also a review of efforts being made to enhance clinicians’ multicultural competence and, based on historical and current forces in the field, a set of predictions about where clinical psychology is heading in the future.

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of efforts on the part of the main players in the wine industry to simultaneously embrace black economic empowerment, economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability. It notes that while this ironically led to the spinning of a new web of certification, with associated costs, the overall consequences were favourable. The cooperative sector underwent the greatest upheaval, while the number of producing wholesalers increased greatly. There was also a marked increase in the number of private cellars, before falling off again after 2008. The reinvention of Cape was also reflected in the introduction of many new cultivars and marked improvements in quality. The most obvious success lay in a quadrupling of exports by volume in the decade after 1997, which absorbed the wine surplus in a context where domestic sales remained sluggish. The chapter ends with a comparison of different types of empowerment deal and an asssessment of how far the industry has been able to deracialise itself at the level of production, distribution and consumption.

Sometimes, it is possible for an industry to preempt government regulation by mitigating the societal concerns that prompt the government to intervene. This is desirable when government intervention is likely to be clumsy. Executing preemption is difficult. The challenge lies in the absence of enforcement power: not every industry player, and sometimes no single industry player, necessarily has an incentive to do what is desirable for the industry as a whole. And, by construction, there is no Institution with the power to impose change. This chapter studies two general settings in which this challenge exists and, nevertheless, the industry is able to achieve optimal preemption.