With a focus on the concept of grounding, this special section argues that the politics of transnational private governance should be understood in the double meaning of, on the one hand, its local implementation and, on the other hand, practices of political contestation and translation. The concept of grounding thus allows for a localized focus on practices used by actors in transnational private governance. By doing so, we hope to make three contributions to the current debate. The first is to never lose sight that governance is first and foremost about politics; the second is to provide a conceptual framework making more explicit the intrinsic limits of transnational private governance efforts; the third is about the form of power exercised by transnational private regulatory initiatives in global production networks. This introduction provides historiographical and conceptual background to this special section, which brings in scholars across social sciences, including political science, sociology, law and philosophy. It introduces the contributions from research communities that usually remain separate in their analysis of standards used in global production networks in the domain of labour, environment, and human rights.