Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Contemporary environmental regulation increasingly relies on independent third-party organizations from across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors to monitor and enforce environmental standards.  This delegation of regulatory administration offers certain benefits – for example, the ability to leverage the proficiency and innovation found in the nonprofit and private sectors towards environmental and regulatory objectives.  Such delegation also creates coordination challenges that can threaten regulatory program fidelity.  For example, potential discrepancies among third-party administrators’ interpretation of regulatory directives undermine the consistency with which regulatory standards are understood and applied.  Regulatory program integrity is further susceptible to the motives with which diverse third-party administrators operate, and the incentives that they face.

This paper examines one mechanism for addressing such challenges facing the delegation of regulatory administration: professional membership associations.  Organizational and management research documents that professional associations facilitate communication and coordination across disparate organizational entities within a given organizational field.  In doing so, professional membership associations establish and enforce shared professional values, ethical standards, and operational norms.  This paper argues that, if oriented towards realizing regulatory program objectives, the institutional pressures prompted by professional membership associations can thus be leveraged to support consistency, stringency, and integrity in the delegated administration of environmental regulatory standards.  

The role of professional membership associations in delegated regulatory administration is examined in the context of U.S. organic food regulations, through a case study of the Accredited Certifiers Association (ACA).  While U.S. organic food regulations are established by the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP), administration of NOP regulations is delegated to independent third-party administrators (known as accredited certifiers) from across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors.  This study documents the emergence and evolution of the ACA – a professional membership association for third-party organic food regulation administrators – and its role within organic food regulation.  Drawing from several of data sources, including in-depth interviews and a survey of third-party organic food regulation administrators, the study examines the functions that the ACA performs, and the perceived impacts of the ACA on the administration of organic food regulatory standards. 

Study findings suggest that the ACA effectively enables communication between third-party organic food regulation administrators, facilitates the establishment of shared expectations and norms among participating administrators, and provides a venue for enforcing those expectations and norms.  The paper discusses how appreciation of professional membership associations’ role in delegated regulatory authority underscores the diversity of regulatory intermediaries in environmental governance, and considers the promise and limitations of professional membership associations in contemporary environmental regulation.