Power from below: rethinking bargaining power in global value chains

Subordinate inclusion is integral to global value chains (GVCs), underpinning broader dynamics of uneven development. This paper presents a theoretically grounded conceptual framework to examine how small-scale farmers in the global south navigate and challenge subordinate inclusion through power from below. It synthesizes insights from the literatures on power in GVCs, the power resources approach, and critical agrarian studies to recast GVCs as contested spaces in which power from below and power from above co-constitute governance, value distribution, and upgrading trajectories. This paper centralizes the concept of bargaining power to explore how subordinate actors leverage individual, structural, associational, and institutional sources of power to renegotiate the terms of their inclusion in relation to the bargaining power of antagonistic actors and in spite of structural constraints. Case studies from the palm oil GVC in the Philippines and the banana GVC in Ecuador illustrate how small-scale farmers assert influence and renegotiate buyer relationships, high-lighting the evolving nature and sources of their bargaining power. By shifting the analytical gaze to subordinate actors as co-constitutive of GVC relations and dynamics, this paper contributes to a more emancipatory understanding of GVC participation and the potential for marginalized actors to reshape global production systems from below.