Transforming Global Commodity Chains: Actor Strategies, Regulation, and Competitive Relations in the Dutch Cut Flower Sector Anouk Patel-Campillo Department of Rural Sociology and Agricultural Economics The Pennsylvania State University 111B Armsby Building University Park, PA 16802 aup20@psu.edu Key words: global commodity chains global value chains (GVC) global production networks (GPN) regulation cooperatives the Netherlands cut flowers chain governance competitive relations abstract Buyer-driven and producer-driven commodity chain governance typologies are helpful in characterizing the relationships between buyers and suppliers engaged in transnational economic activity. However, what is missing in Global Commodity Chain (GCC) and Global Value Chain (GVC) analyses is an expla- nation of how governance structures change over time. In this paper I suggest that the production system associated with particular commodities is not the only factor shaping commodity chain governance. Rather, I argue that actors’ strategies, regulation, and historical trajectories also influence and, in certain conjunctures, transform chain governance. Since regulations and actor strategies in competitive envi- ronments change over time, it follows that chain gov- ernance is dynamic. Drawing from the case of the Dutch cut flower agro-industry, the world’s leading supplier of cut flowers, I build on the GCC, GVC and Global Production Network (GPN) literatures to illustrate how actor strategies, regulation and the his- torical trajectory of the Dutch cut flower GCC shape and change chain governance. What the Dutch cut flower case illustrates is how grower strategies and government policy facilitated the formation of grower cooperatives, and transformed the power rela- tions between growers and buyers in a shift from a buyer to a producer-driven chain. 79 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 87(1):79–99. © 2010 Clark University. www.economicgeography.org