In recent decades, various nonstate governance programmes have emerged as vibrant new institutions seeking to ensure that environmental and social values inform market transactions. This chapter examines the role of globalization and governance gaps as precursors to the rise of sustainability certification programmes and various scholarly debates on such programmes. Extant research highlights the importance of various forms of political consumerism, including boycotts and buycotts, for the rise of sustainability certification programmes. Research also highlights, in contrast, a wider array of other factors of critical importance to the emergence and evolution of sustainability certification programmes and their full potential to govern the practices of global production, distribution, and consumption.