Introduction

In the mid-1990s, the United Nations (UN) underwent a fundamental shift in its approach to transnational corporations (TNCs) and the private sector in general (Patomäki & Teivainen, 2004; Rowe, 2005; Sauvant, 2015). Previously, the role of TNCs in generating ‘development’ had been a highly disputed issue between states from the Global North and Global South. At the start of the current millennium, UN leadership, with the support of mainly European states, introduced a new approach to the business world, which was described by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General at the time, as one of ‘global markets with a human face’ (Annan, 1999). This approach includes private enterprises as partners in the generation of (sustainable) development and expects them to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. This partnership approach to TNCs is part of a broader, ‘post-political’ shift in Western democracies and international relations, where the end of the Cold War was celebrated as the start of an era in which antagonism had disappeared, politics were possible without frontiers, win–win solutions could be found for all, and the world became unipolar around a neoliberal model of globalisation (Mouffe, 2005; Utting & Zammit, 2009). In practice, this era has featured a rise of global private governance initiatives to set norms, standards, and certifications in value chains through multi-stakeholder partnerships between corporations and civil society organisations (Author 2 and Co-Author, 2020; Bartley, 2018) as well as the emergence of corporate-government-civil society partnership constellations in conducting conventional and social business ventures, implementing CSR projects, and overseeing accountable business behaviour (Reed & Reed, 2009).

In this article, we describe the UN’s historical antagonism towards corporations and apply an agonistic lens to analyse the subsequent shift to a partnership approach. Our aim is to understand how Global South states have positioned themselves within the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in regard to establishing partnerships with businesses for sustainable development. Our agonistic lens derives from the work of Mouffe (2009, 2013) on an agonistic world order, which describes how blocs of states strive for hegemony through various practices and discourses. With our approach, we (1) problematise previous research on the UN and business ethics (Ferns & Amaeshi, 2019; Kell, 2005, 2013; Rasche, 2009; Rasche et al., 2013; Williams, 2014) that has overlooked state-related power relations behind the formally established global consensus on working in partnership with businesses, and we (2) add insights to the ethics of dissensus stream of studies on marginalising dynamics in the UN’s consensus-seeking approach to partnerships (e.g. Brand et al., 2020; Dawkins, 2015; Rhodes et al., 2020).

Business ethics and CSR research has acknowledged and problematised the normative preference for consensus (Blowfield, 2005; Levy, 2008) through what Whelan (2013: 757) has deemed a ‘negative perspective on consensual CSR’. Inspired by critiques of the consensus approach, Whelan (2013) has called for more explicit normative appraisals of the role of dissensus in relation to business ethics and CSR. In recent years, Mouffe’s (2005, 2013) ethico-political theoretical framing of agonistic pluralism has emerged as a fruitful way to conceptualise the positive role of dissensus in business ethics (e.g. Fougère & Solitander, 2020, Burchell & Cook, 2013; Couch & Bernaccio, 2020; Dawkins, 2015, 2021, 2022; Rhodes et al., 2020). According to Mouffe (2013), consensus is never a reflection of a solution that has been reached through deliberation on rational grounds by equal parties; rather, it is a reflection of a hegemonic arrangement that has been established and maintained by more powerful actors through hegemonic practices that exclude or accommodate dissensus.

However, no study to date has drawn on Mouffe’s (2009, 2013) discussion of a ‘multipolar agonistic world’ to investigate how states or blocs of states shape global CSR- and partnership-related norms. This approach is also missing from the literature on states and CSR despite recent calls to focus more on the role of states in global and national CSR governance (Kourula et al., 2019; Scherer et al., 2016Schrempf-Stirling, 2015). It has been further overlooked in research on the UN and business ethics that has examined the pros and cons of the UN Global Compact (UNGC) and the role of businesses in shaping the UN’s sustainable development agenda (Ferns & Amaeshi, 2019; Kell, 2005, 2013; Rasche, 2009; Rasche et al., 2013; Williams, 2014). To address these shortcomings, we consider two questions: Which states have been active in establishing and maintaining the partnership approach in the UNGA? And which Global South states’ political priorities have been accommodated in or excluded from the making of the global consensus on partnerships in the UNGA?

To answer these questions, we engage with two different analytical approaches. First, through a historical contextualisation of the UN’s antagonistic past with TNCs, we outline how the shift into the partnership era occurred and which states pursued it in the UNGA. Second, we analyse states’ positioning towards the UNGA resolution ‘Towards Global Partnerships’, which was passed ten times between 2000 and 2018. Our analysis contributes to the literature on the UN and business ethics by identifying how the consensus has been an ongoing hegemonic arrangement in the making since the 2000s and how states have played a particular role in forming this consensus. In addition, we contribute to business ethics studies engaging with dissensus by arguing that ‘agonistic deliberation’ (Brand et al., 2020) by member states in the UNGA is not sufficient. Due to overwhelming corporate power (e.g. Rhodes et al., 2020), it is necessary for expressions of dissensus to translate into much more explicit measures to make partnerships truly beneficial for Global South countries.

The remainder of this article is structured as follows. In the next section, we introduce the theoretical framing of business ethics, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and agonistic pluralism. The subsequent section explains our approach to the UN’s global consensus on partnerships with businesses. We then introduce our materials and methods, which include a historically focused literature review and a qualitative analysis of meeting records from the UNGA. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part is a historical contextualisation of the emergence and establishment of the partnership approach within the UNGA, while the second part focuses on the period from 2000 to 2018 and analyses state interventions concerning the partnership resolution in the UNGA’s second committee. The last section discusses the meaning of the findings in light of previous literature on the UN and business ethics and on the ethics of dissensus. We conclude by highlighting some practical implications of our findings and potential directions for future research.

Business Ethics and Agonistic Pluralism

Over the past few years, an increasing amount of studies in business ethics have drawn inspiration from Mouffe’s (2005, 2013) ethico-political conceptualisation of agonistic pluralism (e.g. Fougère & Solitander, 2020; Barthold & Bloom, 2020; Brand et al., 2020; Brown & Tregidga, 2017; Burchell & Cook, 2013; Sorsa & Fougère 2021; Couch and Bernaccio, 2020; Dawkins, 2015, 2021, 2022; Edward & Willmott, 2013; Rhodes et al., 2020; Thomas & Anner, 2023; Tregidga and Milne, 2020; Winkler et al., 2020).

Antagonism and hegemony are central concepts in Mouffe’s political theory which inform her understanding of ‘the political’ and ‘politics’. ‘The political’ refers to an antagonistic dimension that is always potentially present in social relations. Based mainly on the work of Carl Schmitt (1996 [1932]), Mouffe (2005) has described ‘the political’ as being concerned with collective forms of identification between ‘us’ and ‘them’—identities that are constructed on difference. Meanwhile, ‘politics’ refers to hegemonic practices, discourses, and institutions that seek to establish order and organise human coexistence under conditions which are always potentially conflicting. In other words, any given order and the meaning of social institutions are constituted through practices of articulation or ‘hegemonic practices’ (Mouffe, 2013, p. 2; original work in Laclau and Mouffe, 2001 [1985]). Mouffe’s work draws heavily on Gramsci’s (2011) seminal conceptualisation of hegemony as based on consent rather than coercion. Hegemony provides and sustains order, but is contingent on, and can thus always be challenged by, counter-hegemonic movements (Mouffe, 2013).

Mouffe’s (2005, 2013) understanding of consensus is central to this article. According to this understanding, when it seems like a consensus has been reached in politics, it is not the result of all parties agreeing on a superior solution through deliberation on rational grounds, but is instead a symptom of the currently prevailing hegemonic arrangement, which entails a process of exclusion, compromise, and accommodation. Furthermore, consensus is inherently conflictual; while different collectives agree on the institutions that constitute political association and the ethico-political values that inform it, they disagree on the meaning of those values and the way they should be implemented (Mouffe, 2013, pp. 7–8).

Recent studies and essays employing Mouffe’s ethico-political conceptualisation of agonistic pluralism (e.g. Brand et al., 2020; Dawkins, 2015; Rhodes et al., 2020) have not only problematised consensus as the normative preference in business ethics (Blowfield, 2005; Levy, 2008), but also aligned with the spirit of Whelan’s (2013) call for an affirmation of dissensus as a force for good in business ethics and CSR. At the core of many of these arguments for the desirability of dissensus is the notion that consensus should not be pursued if it serves to conceal underlying conflict. Following Mouffe (1999), Dawkins (2015: 2) has argued that ‘society benefits when conflict is explicitly acknowledged and accommodated’. From this angle, deliberative democracy approaches that aim for consensus can be seen as ‘subtly hegemonic undertaking[s] which [seek] the taming of democratic energies rather than the re-vitalization of democracy’ (Glover, 2012: 88, emphasis in original). Consensus also conceals inequity when constituted through hegemonic relations because it requires a preference for certain practices, meanings, and values (Dawkins, 2015).

In contrast to consensus-aimed deliberation, agonistic pluralism seeks to give a voice and agency to less powerful actors to address issues of importance to them. In this sense, it is a normative ethico-political project that aligns with the norms of human dignity as well as procedural and distributive justice (Dawkins, 2015; Rhodes et al., 2020). In a moderate interpretation of this normative project, Brand et al. (2020) have suggested that deliberation can be a fruitful approach only when dissensus is accepted as a legitimate possibility, and less powerful actors clearly have the right to express their conflicting views. More radical interpretations inspired by the works of Mouffe (1999) and Rancière (2015) similarly strive to give a voice to the most marginalised actors by advocating for egalitarian institutions in which dissensus is accepted and ethics rest on the radical questioning and subversion of totalising tendencies of power (Brown & Tregidga, 2017; Rhodes et al., 2020). These interpretations take issue with the tight coupling of the contemporary politics of consensus—whether in different societies, in transnational multi-stakeholder initiatives, or on the global plane, including in the UN—with overwhelming corporate power.

Some agonistic studies in business ethics have explored the role of (particularly multi-stakeholder) partnerships in transnational or global governance, notably in relation to the ‘political CSR’ debate (Fougère & Solitander, 2020; Sorsa & Fougère 2021; Dawkins, 2015, 2021, 2022), and have lamented the consensus imperative while emphasising the necessity of dissensus for fair deliberation. However, despite calls for a ‘Political CSR 2.0’ and for the business and society literature to engage more deeply with the role of states (Kourula et al., 2019; Scherer et al., 2016; Schrempf-Stirling, 2015), Mouffe’s (2009, 2013), discussion of a ‘multipolar agonistic world’ has not been used as inspiration by business and society scholars to investigate how states or ‘blocs’ of states from different parts of the world have actively engaged in shaping the global norms of CSR and partnerships. While much of Mouffe’s work refers to national contexts in Western liberal democracies, she has extended her analysis to international relations to examine and advocate for an agonistic world order with multipolarity and plurality amongst hegemonic blocs of states (Mouffe, 2009, 2013).

Combining Mouffe’s work on an agonistic world order with the ethics of dissensus may raise questions from the perspective of marginalised actors, as many nation states, including in the Global South, are oppressive institutions with totalising tendencies. However, from the perspective of world politics, where states interact with other states, we can observe similar hegemonic dynamics to those occurring between more and less powerful actors in other sites and contexts. Some states and groups of states are highly dominant and closely aligned with overwhelming corporate power (Bair, 2009, 2015), while, at the other end of the spectrum, the most marginalised states are not similarly aligned with corporations and often lack a voice to advance their own views (e.g. Bhambra, 2021; Hearson, 2021). Consequently, they are forced to rely on large coalitions to ensure some representation of their interests (Panke, 2013b).

UN–Business Partnerships and the Role of States

Previous research and expert opinions have largely claimed that a global consensus between states, businesses, and civil society has emerged from the UN’s partnership approach to businesses (Ferns & Amaeshi, 2019; Kell, 2005, 2013; Williams, 2014), and only a few exceptions have brought forth concerns about the approach amongst the Global South (Utting, 2002; Utting & Zammit, 2009). For example, Ferns and Amaeshi (2019) have shown how proponents of the partnership approach gradually faced criticism from civil society during subsequent UN Earth Summits, and business participation in sustainable development has evolved from ‘undefined’ in 1992 to ‘embraced’ in 2002 and eventually to a ‘driver’ of sustainable development in 2012.

For several scholars and commentators, the UNGC has become a concrete embodiment or a driver of global consensus on CSR and business partnerships in the particular historico-political context (Kell, 2005, 2013; Rasche, 2009, 2012; Rache and Waddock, 2014; Post, 2013; Thérien & Pouliot, 2006; Williams, 2014; Zammit, 2003). Literature on the UN and business ethics has predominantly focused on the successes and weaknesses of the UNGC rather than the politics behind it (Berliner & Prakash, 2014; Rasche, 2009; Sethi & Schepers, 2014). Proponents of the UNGC have emphasised that, despite some room for improvement, the increasing number of signatories and partnerships with corporations as well as the geographical diversification of the UNGC are evidence of its success (Kell, 2005, 2013; Rasche, 2009; Rasche et al., 2013).

In this article, we do not question the existence of a formal UN-based global consensus on partnerships with businesses, as such consensus has been sealed in numerous UNGA resolutions and at UN summits since 2000. Instead, through our agonistic lens, we seek to identify the state-driven hegemonic power relations behind this consensus and identify issues raised by Global South states that have been either addressed or disregarded in the establishment of the consensus. In adopting Mouffe’s (2009, 2013) idea of an agonistic world order, we perceive the Global South as forming a bloc with a collective political identity and a common agenda. The emphasis here is on political identity, as there are multiple ways to perceive the Global South as a collective which do not support the idea of a coherent bloc. In terms of economic issues, such as poverty and positioning within global capitalism, there is no clearly defined North–South division. The perceptions and spread of poverty vary and cross North–South boundaries (Thérien, 1999), and a centre–periphery divide between the rich and the poor, where the rich continue to enrich themselves by further impoverishing the poor, is not clear across the North–South division either. If examined from a world systems angle with a transnational division of labour, states can be categorised as core, semi-periphery, or periphery depending on whether they host high-skill and capital-intensive activities or low-skill, labour-intensive, or resource extraction activities (Wallerstein et al., 2015). The core–periphery division that characterised North–South relations in the 1960s is no longer present, and Global South states vary in their positioning on the core–periphery axis. From a political perspective, they also position themselves differently on the democracy–authoritarianism axis.

Despite these differences, Global South states arguably share a political subjectivity resulting from their common experience of subjugation under colonialism and contemporary global capitalism. This political subjectivity has led to the emergence of concrete political projects, such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77 (G77) in the 1960s, South–South cooperation in the 1970s, and the related BRICS coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in 2009. These coalitions have been active within the UN and politically value respect for the sovereign equality of all states as well as economic and social development (Prashad, 2007). While their popularity and political power have fluctuated over the years, research has shown that Global South states have been unified across a variety of international organisations by an enduring identity rooted in their historical marginalisation and incursions against their sovereignty by the Global North (Freeman, 2017; Johnson & Urpelainen, 2020; Lee, 2023; Panke, 2013ab, 2014). Therefore, in this article, the Global South is considered a loose, but politically aligned collective which draws its subjectivity from a common experience of colonial domination and international peripheralisation.

From a nation-centric perspective, the Global North consists of what is often referred to as ‘the West’, namely the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. Meanwhile, the Global South encompasses all other countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, including China. Russia’s categorisation in this scheme has changed throughout the 2000s and especially after the establishment of the BRICS coalition in 2009. At the start of the twenty-first century, Russia still generally sided with the Global North, but it has become more supportive of the Global South in the past decade.

Within the UN, the Global South is grouped as ‘G77 and China’ and consists of 134 states. This grouping is the largest within the UN, and these states form the majority in any UN vote when politically united. China is not an official member of the G77, but has supported the coalition politically and financially since the early 1990s, which explains the ‘and China’ that usually accompanies ‘G77’. In a practical sense, being grouped into a bloc means that these countriescoordinate with each other to reach a common position. However, the G77 has often struggled to achieve such joint positions in the UN due to the limited capacity of many members to engage in negotiations (Panke, 2013a, 2013b, 2014). Nonetheless, research within the UN has found that the G77 group displays particular policy convergence on economic issues and puts forth resolutions that predominantly concern economic and developmental issues (Panke, 2013b). This still seems to be largely the case even though economic differentiation within the G77 has increased in the past decades as many of the world’s largest corporations originate from BRICS countries. China’s role in the coalition is especially particular given its economic superiority over some of the least developed African countries that are also part of the G77. China has been claimed to have a paradoxical approach to the coalition, as it acts in silent alignment with many Global North positions while anchoring its positions strongly in principles that are important to the G77 (Takahashi, 2021). Furthermore, some aid-receiving countries, especially in Africa, have been affected by ‘vote-buying’ by the US and China within the UN (Alexander & Rooney, 2019; Brazys & Panke, 2017; Dreher et al., 2008) and the lending behaviour of the World Bank and the IMF (Dreher and Strum, 2012). When countries are more dependent on foreign aid and lack the capacity to participate in the UN’s policy processes, they are more likely to shift their positioning (Brazys & Panke, 2017). However, the only notable divisions between the G77 countries and the BRICS states concern nuclear disarmament and the norm of non-interference in countries’ internal issues, especially in relation to resolutions on human rights and democracy (Bailey & Voeten, 2018). Nonetheless, BRICS positions have recently converged dramatically, which signals a common dissatisfaction with the Western-centred international order (Binder & Lockwood Payton, 2022).

In this article, we analyse the UN’s formal consensus on partnerships with businesses against this background, where Global South states share a political subjectivity of historical marginalisation and dissatisfaction with the Western-centred international order, and more economically powerful states are known to influence the behaviour of less powerful states within the UN. This angle has been overlooked in previous research on the UN and business ethics (Kell, 2005, 2013; Post, 2013; Rasche, 2009, 2012; Rache and Waddock, 2014; Rasche et al., 2013; Williams, 2014).

Methodology

The context of our analysis is the United National General Assembly. The UNGA has been the focus of much research aiming to understand state preferences and positioning (Baturo et al., 2017; Panke, 2013b) because it is the only arena in which all 193 UN member states are equally represented with an equal share of votes. Moreover, all states have equal rights to participate in resolution initiation, negotiations, and decision-making and to call for a formal vote. Resolutions are not legally binding but mandate other UN bodies or relate to the member states of the UN. The UNGA was also chosen as the study context because, as explained in the following section, it has been the international arena for Global South states to debate the role of TNCs and sustainable development on formally equal footing with the Global North.

In this article, we address our research questions through two analytical approaches. First, we conduct a historical analysis of how the Global North and the G77 have positioned themselves towards the UN’s approach to businesses from the 1960s until 1999 as well as which kinds of practices laid the groundwork for the partnership approach in the UNGA. The historical contextualisation is informed by a literature review of previous research on the UN’s approach to the private sector as well as a review of related UNGA resolutions in the 1990s. This part of the study addresses the first research question by determining which states were initially behind the shift.

The second approach is a qualitative analysis of documents related to the resolution ‘Towards Global Partnerships’ (hereafter ‘the partnership resolution’) that was initiated, debated, and passed in the UNGA on 10 occasions between 2000 and 2018. This analysis addresses both research questions. The primary material consists of meeting records that contain state representatives’ oral interventions on these ten occasions. These meeting records can be accessed publicly through the UN’s digital library. The secondary material includes the adopted resolution texts and documents related to the resolution process, such as ‘Guidelines on Cooperation between the United Nations and the Business Sector’ as well as resolutions initiated by the G77 during the same era (see Annex 1 for a list of documents). This analysis seeks to identify the states which have been active in maintaining the formal consensus on partnerships throughout the 2000s and to ascertain how Global South states’ political priorities have been accommodated or excluded in establishing the global consensus on partnerships in the UNGA.

We sought inspiration from previous research to identify suitable methods of analysis for our data. State positioning in the UN has been examined through quantitative analyses of voting patterns (Bailey & Voeten, 2018; Binder & Lockwood Payton, 2022; Lee, 2023; Panke, 2013a; Voeten, 2000), resolution sponsoring (Dijkhuizen & Onderco, 2019), speeches, and other oral interventions (Kentikelenis and Voeten, 2020), through qualitative analyses of oral interventions, and through interviews (Panke, 2013b). For our purposes, an analysis of voting patterns was not feasible, as the partnership resolution was never passed for voting since formal consensus was reached at the committee level. Reaching consensus at the committee level is typical in the UNGA, where only 20 to 30 per cent of resolutions move to a vote, and resolutions regarding development are usually not voted on (Seabra & Mesquita, 2022). Therefore, instead of conducting voting analysis, we carried out a sponsorship analysis and a qualitative analysis of oral interventions that were made during the resolution processes.

To date, the partnership resolution has been negotiated and discussed in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, and 2021. Due to a delay in accessing the meeting records from the 2021 process, our analysis covers up to 2018. It is common practice in the UNGA to repeatedly reintroduce (and renegotiate) resolutions to ensure continuity and sustained attention to some matters, to build consensus, and to address changing circumstances.

The resolution was initially discussed in the UNGA, but later negotiations on the resolution were held in the UNGA’s second committee, which deals with economic and financial matters. Traditionally, nearly all resolutions in this committee are introduced by the G77. The partnership resolution was an exception, as it was introduced by Germany and the European group in 2000. The G77 states generally coordinate their position on resolutions that have not been initiated by the group itself. As noted above, the group maintains coherence on economic and developmental issues, which are addressed by the partnership resolution. However, as also noted above, political coordination within the group can be challenging due to resource constraints or aid dependency (Brazys & Panke, 2017). The G77 bloc spoke in unison three of the ten times the resolution was passed. Therefore, in our analysis, we do not rely only on official G77 and China group positions, but also include interventions that were made by individual G77 member states.

Initially, we performed a sponsorship analysis to understand the extent to which G77 states have actively supported the resolution. ‘Sponsorship’ refers to the act of joining a resolution draft in its initiation or negotiation stage as a sign of strong support. In practice, joint sponsorship of a resolution is sought after by the resolution’s initiators because UN members believe that a higher number of states supporting a given draft resolution in its initial stages will increase the chances of it being adopted and of reaching consensus in the assembly (Panke, 2013b). The sponsorship analysis was performed by collecting the lists of countries that were mentioned as sponsors in the draft and final versions of the resolutions adopted between 2000 and 2018.

To identify the issues and themes raised by G77 states in the resolution negotiations, we analysed the meeting records in two analytical rounds. In the first round, the state interventions were coded thematically through inductive reasoning to identify the issues that states raised in their interventions, to assess the frequency at which these issues were raised, and to determine the regional blocs or geographical alignment (e.g. G77, EU, former Soviet, US) behind these interventions. This round yielded a high number of codes, such as ‘pro-voluntary CSR’, ‘skills transfer’, ‘South–South cooperation’, and ‘sovereignty’, which included information about bloc alignment. In the second analytical round, similarities between codes were identified, and the codes were merged under aggregate, descriptive headings labelled by the authors as ‘support for equal economic development’, ‘voluntary and flexible CSR’, ‘UN and national steering’, and ‘monitoring, accountability, transparency’. The geographical origin of these themes was analysed to differentiate between those dominantly raised by the Global South (G77 and China) and those dominantly raised by the Global North (EU, US, former Soviet, and other allied nations). Finally, the analysis of state positions was complemented by a qualitative content analysis of the adopted resolution texts and additional secondary material (see Annex 1, second column) to determine which themes raised by the G77 were addressed in or excluded from the actual resolution texts and supporting materials.

The analysis is presented below through a timeline that distinguishes between the period from 2000 to 2008 from the period from 2009 to 2018. The reason for using this format instead of one constructed around the identified issues of dissensus is that it provides more nuance on changes to state positionings throughout the analysed 18-year period.

A limitation of our approach is that it does not capture the informal negotiations on UNGA matters that are typically held behind closed doors. These informal negotiations would have provided more insight into the hegemonic practices involved in creating and maintaining the formal consensus on partnership. However, capturing the contents of such informal negotiations on the resolution would have required access to and interviews with officials involved in the process since 2000, which was beyond the scope of this research. As our approach consists of sponsorship and meeting record analyses, it encompasses only publicly available information on official states’ and state groups’ positions. It is important to note that these statements are political in nature and therefore describe viewpoints and visions rather than explicit partnership practices. In the next sections, we present the analytical parts of this article.

Historical Contextualisation: From Antagonism to the Partnership Era in the UN, 1964–1999

The UN has served as an important world stage for states to contest, promote, and develop ideas, programmes, and initiatives for interaction with TNCs at the global level. Between the 1960s and 1990s, two main lines of contestation dominated UN debates on the role of TNCs in generating development. First, during the Cold War, an ideological dispute between socialism and capitalism divided UN member states into blocs based on whether they believed that TNCs could or could not generate development. Second, a ‘centre-periphery dispute’ divided the Global North and the Global South, which respectively represented the ‘home countries’ (the US and other OECD countries) and the ‘host countries’ (the G77 countries) of TNCs (Bailey & Voeten, 2018; Kentikelenis & Voeten, 2021; Voeten, 2000). This centre–periphery dispute did not mainly question capitalism, but instead questioned whether TNCs could generate development for poorer countries if left unregulated. Many governments from the Global South regarded TNCs as exploitative and driven by profit at any cost, while governments from the Global North predominantly regarded them as engines of growth which were necessary for economic transformation. Thus, the dispute centred on just distribution, self-determination, and political and economic sovereignty, and it manifested in a 30-year-long debate over whether TNCs should be steered by legality or the free markets (Bair, 2015; Krasner, 1985; Rowe, 2005; Sagafi-nejad & Dunning, 2008; Toye & Toye, 2004). This ‘regulation versus free market’ dispute was accompanied by contention over the role of states in the Global South. While many Southern host countries have considered themselves to be victims of exploitative TNCs, the Northern home countries of most TNCs have regarded TNCs as victims of the weak governance, poor market conditions, and corruption of their host countries in the Global South (Blowfield, 2012).

The debate between the Global North and Global South over the role of TNCs started after the influx of newly independent African countries into the UN. In 1928, Global South leaders organised themselves for the first time for a meeting of the League Against Imperialism in Brussels to unite the anticolonial movements of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. However, it was not until a meeting in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 that the newly or almost independent states from these continents were able to inaugurate tighter cooperation. The Bandung Afro-Asian Conference sparked the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. In 1964, the G77 group of non-aligned Asian, African, and Latin American countries was formed in the UN context (Prashad, 2007).

After 1964, the G77 formed a majority within the UN and used its power to propose declarations and resolutions on self-determination and political and economic sovereignty (Sagafi-nejad & Dunning, 2008). Such demands for economic sovereignty culminated in the UN Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974. The core idea of the NIEO was to address power asymmetries in the global economy. The call for the NIEO included demands for the North–South transfer of primary goods, energy, technology, and knowledge as well as preferential trading arrangements for poorer countries and debt forgiveness (Bair, 2015). The fears raised by Global South members about TNCs exploiting their national economies sparked processes within the UN that led to the founding of the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations and the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) in 1974 (Hamdani & Ruffing, 2015). Subsequently, negotiations on a mandatory code of conduct on TNCs launched in 1976 to meet increasing demands, especially from the Global South, to regulate the private sector.

The UNCTC and the negotiations on a mandatory code of conduct lasted until 1992, when the centre was abolished and some of its programmes were moved to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Hamdani & Ruffing, 2015; Kell, 2002; Rowe, 2005; Sauvant, 2015). At this point, the UN started to fundamentally reformulate its approach to the private sector from a somewhat antagonistic one, which promoted international regulation and the steering of TNCs, to one that promoted market-led, voluntary partnership approaches. Amongst UN member states, the transition towards a market-oriented approach was spearheaded by the US and its allies. The US had always been opposed to the UNCTC and the UN Code of Conduct on TNCs even though the centre was led by Europeans. The U.S. president at the time, Ronald Reagan, was exposed to especially heavy UN criticism within his party, and the UN, the UNCTC, and the Code of Conduct were considered anti-American and anti-capitalist (Bair, 2009, p. 376).

The fall of the Soviet Union and simultaneously deteriorating consensus of the G77 group made it easier for the US to pursue a voluntary, market-led approach in line with U.S. business interests, which later became known as the Washington Consensus (Rowe, 2005; Sauvant, 2015). The deterioration of the G77 consensus at the time was due to heavy indebtedness—a consequence of the oil crisis in the 1970s—and the subsequent reliance on condition-based lending from the IMF and the World Bank. These developments led to an era of structural adjustment in the 1990s, during which economies in the Global South started to liberalise and simplify entry, establishment, and exit rules for foreign capital (Bair, 2015; Patomäki & Teivainen, 2004; Rowe, 2005; Sagafi-nejad & Dunning, 2008).

Resolutions in the UNGA are examples of practices that the US and its allies pursued to establish a market-led approach to the private sector as a hegemonic order. In 1992, the US initiated a resolution in the UNGA’s second committee called ‘Privatization in the context of economic restructuring, economic growth and sustainable development’, which was followed in 1993 by a resolution on ‘Entrepreneurship and privatization for economic growth and sustainable development’ and by further resolutions on ‘Business and Development’ in 1995, 1997, and 1999. These resolutions aimed to promote a free market economy through privatisation, the dismantling of monopolies, and addressing corruption. All were adopted in the UNGA without a vote.

However, during the 1990s, it quickly became clear that a pure free market approach was not a panacea for the entire world. Publics in the home countries of TNCs in the Global North were receiving more information about corporate irresponsibility by companies such as Nike, Nestlé, and Shell in different parts of the Global South, and civil society became more vocal about the negative effects of globalisation. To respond to this critique while countering calls for a mandatory code of conduct, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) became active in committing to and promoting voluntary codes and guidelines and engaging in corporate philanthropy (Utting & Zammit, 2009). At the time, many individual companies were adopting CSR standards and voluntary codes of conduct to address social responsibility issues, and the number of codes of conduct was significantly increasing (Post, 2013).

In the 1990s, the private sector also mobilised in relation to the UN in an unprecedented way. The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro represented an important turning point for this mobilisation. In preparation for the conference, the ICC adopted a Business Charter for Sustainable Development, and the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) was formed by business leaders from a range of industries. The ICC and BCSD were able to influence the outcome statement of the conference and temper calls for mandatory regulations (Banerjee, 2008; Rowe, 2005). In 1995, the BCSD merged with the World Industry Council for the Environment to form the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

Most likely influenced by these trends in society, the US-led free market approach started to show elements in support of partnerships for sustainable development and CSR at the end of the 1990s. In 1999, a reintroduced draft resolution on business and development encouraged public–private partnerships for sustainable development, and negotiations were held on the inclusion of CSR principles and standards in the text. No concrete references to principles or standards were made, but in the end, probably as a compromise, the adopted resolution encouraged governments to create an environment that enables corporations to conduct their business in a sustainable and socially responsible way (A/RES/54/204 and adjacent documents, Table 1 in Annex).

However, it was not the US but the European group of states, together with UN leadership, who took lead in promoting the partnership agenda within the UN at the end of the 1990s. Practices and processes to bring businesses more firmly into the UN intensified from 1999 onwards. In 1999, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed the UNGC to the international business community at the World Economic Forum, and the resolution ‘Towards Global Partnerships’, which is analysed in the next section, was introduced in 2000 by Germany with support from European countries in the UNGA. The aim of this partnership resolution was to initiate discussion amongst UN member states on UN partnerships with civil society organisations and private sector actors. According to the founding director of the UNGC, Georg Kell (2005, 2013), the resolution was introduced by European member states to provide a space for political discourse and deliberation, help overcome mutual distrust between the UN and the private sector, secure the mandate of the UNGC, and dissolve G77 suspicions. The debate and negotiations on the resolution were considered an occasion for member states to comment on the partnership approach in general and on the UNGC in particular. After Germany’s initial move, the resolution was repeatedly initiated by the EU group of UN member states until 2021 to maintain the topic’s position on the global agenda.

When the resolution was introduced in 2000, governments from the Global South were sceptical and negative towards the shift in UN–business relations, which sought to bring corporations closer rather than steer them (Kell, 2005; Zammit, 2003). At the time the UNGC was launched, Global South states still feared heavily asymmetrical power relations with TNCs, infringement on their sovereignty, and limits to the possibility to industrialise on their own terms (Zammit, 2003). Moreover, Global South states initially suspected that the UNGC was a vehicle to impose social conditions on them through economic and trade politics (Kell, 2005).

If we assume that a deliberative consensus on partnerships was reached, we could also assume that Global South demands for regulation and steering faded, and fears about power asymmetries were gradually overcome. The following section explains the extent to which such assumptions have been true since 2000.

Building Consensus Through Addressing and Excluding Global South Demands, 2000–2018

In this section, we analyse the positioning of states in the process of reaching formal consensus on the UNGA resolution on global partnerships between 2000 and 2018. The analysis focuses on how the consensus, as a hegemonic arrangement, has been pursued, and specifically how diverging views have been accommodated or excluded from it. This section is divided into two sub-sections, which cover the periods from 2000 to 2008 and 2009 to 2018, respectively, to reflect changes in state positioning towards the resolution.

Phase I: Overcoming Criticism and Reaching Consensus, 2000–2008

As described in the last section, Germany, in alliance with European states, took the lead in pursuing the partnership approach within the UNGA in the 1990s and was the strongest supporter of the UNGC (Table 1, A/55/PV.45). The German Foreign Minister at the time, Joschka Fischer, stated in the UNGA in 2000 that market forces needed to be balanced by a political corrective mechanism to prevent world injustice from increasing further. Those who had been excluded from global markets needed to be given more say in political decisions that steered global processes and be afforded better opportunities to gain a fair share from the world economy (Table 1, A/55/PV.14). The Global North was not actively unified, as the US was silent at the official plenary meetings where the resolution was discussed, which may suggest that the nation was resistant to Minister Fischer’s proposal of a ‘political corrective mechanism’ of global markets or that the resolution was simply not in the nation’s sphere of interest. Several years later, the US joined in sponsoring the resolution once in 2011.

The G77 governments were initially excluded from the UNGC and from defining new UN principles for business partnerships (Kell, 2005, 2013). Therefore, in 2000, the G77 demanded intergovernmental oversight of the UNGC (Table 1, A/55/PV.45). Observers have cited this demand as a reason for Germany’s initiation of the partnership resolution, as it would provide a space and process to pacify G77 antagonism and secure the mandate of the UNGC (Kell, 2005, 2013). The resolution itself did not give G77 states access to the governance of the UNGC, but the negotiation process offered a space for discussion.

The analysis of state interventions during the first years of negotiating the global partnership resolution confirms previous findings on Global South criticism at the start of the partnership era (Utting, 2002; Utting & Zammit, 2009). Initial meeting interventions from G77 countries revealed fears that partnerships would serve the interests of only a few countries and large corporations at the expense of the majority of peoples. For example, in a very antagonistic tone, the representative of the small island state Saint Lucia denounced the new partnership approach as one of exploitation and colonisation that would allow developing countries’ economies to become increasingly owned and directed by foreign actors with little government control (Table 1, A/55/PV.45). Furthermore, partnerships were thought to benefit only the civil societies of industrialised countries, to infringe upon state sovereignty, and to be adopted without consulting all member states of the UN (Table 1, A/55/PV.45). Despite these fears, the resolution was adopted without a vote, which is common in the UNGA. The resolution text itself was brief; its main outcome was a mandate on the UN Secretary-General to report annually to the UNGA about private sector cooperation and private partnerships (Table 1, A/RES/55/215).

In subsequent years, when the resolution was reinitiated by European states to further develop the agenda, the G77 was rather well organised and spoke in unison at meetings concerning the resolution in 2001, 2005, and 2007. Some Global South states continued to accuse TNCs of exploitative behaviour and exclusion of Southern interests and companies, and G77 members criticised the partnership approach as another protectionist measure to guard the Global North’s economic interests (Table 1, A/56/PV.37). In addition to such accusations, different interventions by G77 states offered concrete suggestions on how countries in the Global South should be supported in partnerships and how the UNGC could ensure equal economic development between the North and the South—for instance, by including companies from the Global South in partnerships, which was especially emphasised by BRICS states, and by transferring resources, skills, and technology through partnerships not only through North–South partnerships but also through South–South cooperation (Table 1, A/56/PV.37; A/58/PV.40; A/C.2/60/SR.31).

When the partnership resolution was initiated, G77 countries persistently voiced that the superiority of state sovereignty should be safeguarded and that national development plans and regulations had to be prioritised in partnerships with businesses. In addition to state sovereignty, G77 states assigned importance to the role of the UN as an inter-governmental body of sovereign, equal states superior to corporations (Table 1, A/55/PV.45; A/56/PV.37; A/58/PV.40; A/C.2/60/SR.31; A/C.2/62/SR.25).

Finally, the G77 called for set principles to guide the UN’s operation of its business relations. These principles were to be grounded in the UN Charter (Table 1, A/58/PV.40; A/58/PV.76; A/C.2/62/SR.25). The G77 states also made demands for transparency, accountability, and monitoring of business partnerships, particularly the UNGC, throughout the analysed period (Table 1, A/55/PV.45; A/56/PV.37; A/58/PV.40; A/C.2/60/SR.31; A/C.2/62/SR.25).

The European penholders, UN leadership, and UNGC took note of these criticisms and suggestions. In the first years of the 2000s, the UNGC secretariat responded to demands to include companies from the South by engaging in outreach efforts towards most BRICS countries (China, India, Brazil, and South Africa) to gain support from businesses in these countries. This work initiated local UNGC networks all over the world and reduced the criticism of the imbalanced geographical coverage of the UNGC (Table 1, A/RES/64/223). In response to the calls for safeguarding sovereignty, respect for national sovereignty was included in the resolution text at the beginning of the 2000s (Table 1, A/RES/56/76). Furthermore, the request of G77 states to establish binding principles led to the development of the Guidelines on Cooperation between the United Nations and the Business Sector in 2000. These guidelines specified principles for the selection of business partners by UN organisations, general principles for business partnerships, instructions on the use of the UN emblem by businesses, and a description of different modalities through which partnerships could be formed (Table 1, A/56/323).

Once the issues of safeguarding sovereignty, setting principles, and ensuring business participation from the Global South in the UNGC were accommodated through articulation in resolutions and practical efforts to expand the UNGC, the partnership approach gained broad support on all continents in the Global South. Explicit anti-TNC remarks disappeared soon after the turn of the century and re-emerged only in passing in a few meeting interventions in 2007 and 2011 (Table 1, A/C.2/62/SR.27; A/C.2/66/SR.32). Amongst the G77 countries that spoke out at that time, support for the UNGC was strong, especially in interventions made by Latin American countries. China was also supportive. Brazil, China, and Colombia started to provide financial support for the UNGC, which China continues to do today (Sethi & Schepers, 2014; UNGC, n.d.). Supportive Global South stances, such as those of Brazil and Thailand, described the UNGC as a good ‘tool’ for companies in the Global South to familiarise themselves with UN norms. Russia exhibited a positive attitude towards the UNGC as well (Table 1, A/56/PV.37; A/58/PV.40).

The analysis of sponsorship figures also confirms that the resolution gained broad support across the Global North–South divide during the first decade of the 2000s. The figures reveal that African states were the largest regional group sponsoring the resolution, followed by Latin American countries, while sponsorship from states in the Middle East and Asia was minor and sporadic (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

G77’s resolution sponsorship by region, 2000–2021

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In sum, our analysis of the years 2000—2008 indicates that a broad consensus was reached, especially through the European penholders’ and the UNGC office’s efforts to accommodate G77 worries about sovereignty and the exclusion of G77 companies from the UNGC. Through the re-initiation of the resolution, the states were provided the opportunity to deliberate over the UNGC and regularly raise any concerns about the partnership approach.

However, the support for the resolution was not firm. As Fig. 2 illustrates, sponsorship of the resolution peaked in 2007, when it was sponsored by 92 out of 193 UN member states. The G77 support for the resolution was at its highest in the same year, with support from 42 out of 134 G77 countries—almost equal to the number in the Global North. Since then, G77 sponsorship for the resolution has declined, and it dropped significantly to just 16 countries in 2011. This decrease was caused by multiple factors, which we discuss in the following section.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Resolution sponsorship, 2000–2021. * The Global North includes both EU and non-EU European countries (Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Republic of Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, Ukraine) as well as North America and allied states (Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the US). ** Non-G77 members in central Asia and the Caucasus region include Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan

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Phase II: Crumbling Consensus, Accommodated Demands, and the G77’s Own Agenda, 2009–2018

As the sponsorship analysis above shows, the resolution reached its highest peak of support across the North–South divide in 2007. Explanations for the subsequent drop can be found in previous sponsorship research, which has revealed that sponsorship practices decrease when countries belong to large coalitions of countries and can easily ‘free ride’ on the activities of their fellow group members and group leaders (Panke, 2013b, pp. 66–67). However, since sponsorship of the partnership resolution by G77 states started to drop in 2009, the rotating G77 chairs have not been amongst the sponsors of the resolution. Therefore, no evidence suggests that other G77 states took a ‘free ride’ on the group chair’s sponsorship, and explanations must be sought elsewhere.

Importantly, the resolution and its adjacent processes have not been isolated from concurrent changes in world politics and the global economy. At the time when G77 sponsorship of the resolution started to diminish, the economic and financial crisis of 2008 had just begun, and the economic rise of China had reached a turning point (Takahashi, 2021). Xi Jinping became China’s vice-president in 2008 and president in 2013. He introduced a more aggressive foreign policy towards the US, and he initiated the Belt and Road Initiative as well as a more active approach to the UN (Foot, 2014). Meanwhile, Russia waged a war on Georgia in 2008, which marked a key shift in Russia’s relations with the West. In 2009, the BRICS coalition was formed.

With these changes, a new era of great power politics was emerging. However, most of these issues were not directly discussed at meetings concerning the partnership resolution. Rather, the topic that gained the most attention in these debates was the financial crisis, which reignited the G77’s worries about unequal economic development and the inability of many Global South governments to protect their economies from economic fluctuations (Table 1, A/C.2/63/SR.31, A/C.2/64/SR.32). A few years after the start of the financial crisis, G77 interventions in the committee reiterated the need to recognise the superiority of state sovereignty and national development plans in the implementation of the partnership resolution (Table 1, A/C.2/66/SR.32). Furthermore, familiar G77 demands for the transfer of skills, resources, and technology were made in every negotiation of the resolution (Table 1, A/C.2/66/SR.32; A/C.2/68/SR.25; A/C.2/70/SR.28; A/C.2/73/SR.21).

Demands for monitoring also re-emerged after 2009 due to a UN Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) report on the UNGC in 2011, which included a long list of criticisms and points for improvement. Amongst other problems, the UNGC was found to lack transparency and accountability mechanisms (JIU, 2010). The report sparked public criticism towards the UNGC, which was blamed for hosting hundreds of ‘free rider companies’ (Confino, 2012). Finally, problems related to representation in the UNGC were still unresolved. The board of the UNGC continued to be heavily dominated by business representation, with states completely absent (JIU, 2017). Only donor governments were officially part of the governance structure through the Global Compact Donor Group (Sethi & Schepers, 2014). Thus, it excluded state representation from the Global South apart from China, Brazil, and Colombia, who financially supported the UNGC.

In response to worries about the transfer of skills, resources, and technology as well as monitoring and representation, several acts of accommodation were undertaken by European penholders and the UN. Skill, resource, and technology transfer were ‘emphasised’, ‘recognised’, ‘recalled’, and ‘stressed’ in the resolution text each year since 2001, with ‘stress’ laid on them in 2018. Furthermore, the Guidelines on Cooperation between the United Nations and the Business Sector were revised in 2009 and again in 2015 to ensure improved accountability of partnership arrangements. The update in 2009 extended the original guidelines by explicitly stating that businesses engaging with the UN must be aligned with UN values and principles. It also included rules regarding the kinds of companies that the UN should not cooperate with, namely businesses that violate human rights, use child labour, participate in the sale and manufacture of military weapons, violate UN Security Council sanctions, or fail to systematically demonstrate their commitment to the principles of the UNGC (Table 1, A/64/337).

In 2013, Annan’s successor, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, called for further transparency, accountability, and risk awareness in his biannual report on partnerships. This call gained support from G77 states (Table 1, A/68/326). Consequently, the partnership resolution stipulated another update to the guidelines to align them with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights adopted by the Human Rights Council. This stipulation coincided largely with a 2014 proposal by Ecuador and South Africa in the UN Human Rights Council to create a binding treaty on business and human rights. Therefore, the 2015 guideline update included a requirement for the UN’s business partners to be committed to respecting and implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The guidelines also mandated UN organisations to perform due diligence on potential business partners well ahead of establishing any partnership. Another significant revision was the introduction of ‘accountability’ amongst the general principles of UN–business partnerships. Specifically, all partnerships should include accountability measures in the form of monitoring and evaluation processes for how partnerships abide with the UNGC values and the UN Guiding Principles as well as the adequacy of the partnership activities in responding to the concerns of the communities that the partnership aims to address (UNGC, 2015).

In the meantime, some changes occurred within the G77. Although the group demonstrated unity in calling for respect for sovereignty, the transfer of skills, resources, and technology, and greater accountability measures, the group’s internal cohesion on the partnership resolution seemed to be crumbling. In 2011, many G77 countries started to vocalise their views on the resolution in regionally aligned groupings. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was the first to do so in 2011 (Table 1, A/C.2/66/SR.32), and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Least Developed Countries group (LDCs) spoke in unison in 2013 (Table 1, A/C.2/68/SR.25). In 2015, CARICOM, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and ASEAN expressed their own joint positions (Table 1, A/C.2/70/SR.28), while AOSIS and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), in addition to ASEAN, followed suit in 2018 (Table 1, A/C.2/73/SR.21).

These groupings had slightly different positions on partnerships with businesses. Amongst these groupings, ASEAN and CELAC expressed the most support for partnerships and voluntary CSR measures (Table 1, A/C.2/66/SR.32; A/C.2/70/SR.28; A/C.2/73/SR.21). Hence, these two groupings were more aligned with Global North stances than others in the G77. In a similar vein, China stressed flexibility, highlighted the importance of the UNGC, and called for clear guidelines on the UN’s partnerships with businesses. China also stated that partnerships with the private sector should not replace North–South development cooperation (Table 1, A/C.2/66/SR.32; A/C.2/70/SR.28). In comparison, the more economically vulnerable AOSIS, CARICOM, and LDCs were the most emphatic about the transfer of skills and resources, support for industrialisation, sovereignty, clear principles, and monitoring (Table 1, A/C.2/68/SR.25; A/C.2/70/SR.28; A/C.2/73/SR.21).

Despite their different priorities, all of these regional groupings within the G77 continued to be united, at least rhetorically, around the themes of state sovereignty, national ownership of development processes to which partnerships contribute, support for the transfer of skills, technology, and resources through partnerships, and more robust accountability in the UN’s partnerships with businesses. These themes were also stressed in the unified positions of the G77 and China in 2001, 2005, and 2007. In contrast, the Global North interventions in the resolution debates did not feature these themes at any comparative strength.

In addition, from 2008 onwards, the G77 and China group initiated its own resolutions on matters related to the partnership resolution. One of these new resolutions, ‘Towards a New International Economic Order’ (Table 1, A/RES/63/224), was initiated in 2008 around the 35th anniversary of its 1974 predecessor, the NIEO, which was a highlight of the antagonistic era in UN–business relations. The NIEO resolution reaffirmed the need to continue working towards an international economic order based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation, and solidarity amongst all states. The US requested a vote on the resolution and eventually voted against it. European countries and other Global North states, such as Canada and Australia, opted for abstention, perhaps in an attempt to remain neutral towards the resolution while not supporting it. The G77 was unified in voting for the resolution. With its 134 member countries, the G77 has a majority in the UNGA, and the new NIEO resolution was adopted by the UNGA on eight occasions between 2008 and 2020 despite US opposition and European abstention. In 2019, the G77 and China group initiated a related resolution called ‘Promoting Investments for Sustainable Development’ (A/RES/74/199). In this resolution, the group took a stance on CSR in relation to sovereignty, stating that the group ‘notes the importance of sustainable corporate practices, including integrating environmental, social and governance factors into company reporting, as appropriate, with countries deciding on the appropriate balance of voluntary and mandatory rules, and encourages businesses to adopt principles for responsible business and investing’ (emphasis added).

In sum, the period from 2009 to 2018 witnessed a decline in unity around the partnership resolution. The G77 group started to pursue its own resolution agenda on topics regarding the private sector, global economy, sustainability, and CSR. Furthermore, sub-regional groupings within the G77 began to coordinate joint positions on the partnership resolutions, and differences between the stronger and more marginalised economies came to the fore. During this period, European penholders and the UNGC took measures to further accommodate G77 states’ interests and concerns into resolution texts and guidelines.

Discussion

In this article, we have sought to determine which states have been active in establishing and maintaining the partnership approach in the UNGA as well as how Global South states’ political priorities have been accommodated or excluded in the making of this approach. We have found that the shift towards a partnership approach was driven by European states together with UN leadership at the end of the 1990s, and the negotiations on the resolution on global partnerships was initiated to provide space for the G77 states to express their fears and criticism about entering partnerships with (mainly Western) corporate powers. We have also identified the political priorities of the G77 states in negotiations on this resolution. Such priorities have included (1) safeguarding the superiority of sovereignty and national development plans over corporate power, (2) the transfer of resources, skills, and technology through partnerships, (3) the inclusion of Global South companies in the UNGC, (4) intergovernmental oversight of the UNGC, and (5) more robust monitoring and accountability mechanisms for the UN’s partnerships with businesses. Our analysis shows that, throughout the 2000s, these demands have been articulated in regularly revised resolution texts and updated UN guidelines on cooperation with businesses, or they have been accommodated by other measures, such as deliberations in the UNGA or UNGC outreach towards the Global South.

However, the actual practice might tell a different story. An analysis of the practical implementation of the partnership approach from a G77 viewpoint is beyond the scope of this article, and we can only speculate about its success based on the written resolution material that we analysed. From that material, we know that the financial crisis of 2008 sparked new fears about Western corporate power, and an emphasis on sovereignty was reiterated in interventions by G77 states. Furthermore, the repeated calls for more resource, skill, and technology redistribution, especially from the most economically marginalised G77 states, gives some indication that the actual partnerships were not able to accommodate this concern. In addition, the governance of the UNGC has not been reformed, and most G77 states still lack oversight power of it. We also know that since 2008, the G77 and China group has advanced its own parallel resolutions concerning similar themes as the partnership resolution while also gradually withdrawing its sponsorship of the partnership resolution.

The UN’s Partnership Approach as a Hegemonic Arrangement

With this article, we make two contributions to the body of literature on the UN and business ethics. First, by focusing on state involvement in the making of the partnership approach, we have covered a previously overlooked angle. Second, by applying an agonistic lens to analyse the formal consensus on partnerships as a hegemonic arrangement, we have exposed the power relations behind it. Our findings illustrate how the establishment and maintenance of this approach has been led in the UNGA by European states who have been the penholders of the partnership resolution for the past two decades. While the actual making of this agenda has, of course, been carried out by numerous actors, including UN staff, corporations, and civil society, this article has focused on the state actors involved in driving the agenda.

As described above, previous research and expert opinions have largely claimed that a global consensus between states, businesses, and civil society has emerged from the UN’s partnership approach to businesses, that the UNGC has become a concrete embodiment or a driver of a global consensus on CSR and business partnerships, and that the increasing number of signatories and partnerships with corporations and the geographical diversification of the UNGC are proof of its success (Ferns & Amaeshi, 2019; Kell, 2005, 2013; Rasche, 2009, 2012; Rache and Waddock, 2014; Rasche et al., 2013; Post, 2013; Thérien & Pouliot, 2006; Williams, 2014; Zammit, 2003). Our research confirms many of these previous findings. The support for a partnership approach has been broad amongst states across the North–South divide. In fact, a number of G77 states actively supported the approach until 2009. In more recent years, the economically stronger G77 states from Asia and Latin America have continued to show support for the UNGC, and the UNGC’s geographical expansion to the Global South has been positively received by G77 states. Most notably, European states have made numerous efforts to accommodate Global South interests and criticism in resolution texts and guidelines to sustain a formal consensus around the issue.

Nevertheless, this article has shown that such consensus does not reflect that a solution has been reached through deliberation on rational grounds amongst equal parties. Rather, it reflects that the process has involved hegemonic practices to accommodate views that conflict with the idea of working in partnership with corporations. In line with Mouffe (2013, pp. 7–8), inherently conflictual consensus implies that different collectives agree on the institutions that constitute political association and the ethico-political values that inform it but disagree on the meaning of those values and the way they should be implemented. Our findings illustrate that the resolution process has involved negotiations about the meaning of partnerships, and G77 states have called for clear principles, the superiority of state sovereignty, and redistribution through partnerships. Even though they have not fundamentally challenged the idea of engaging in partnership with businesses, they have questioned how these partnerships should be designed and operate to create a more equally beneficial global economy.

While we could conclude that states have agreed on paper what partnerships should mean, it remains unclear whether the actual implementation of partnerships with the private sector has satisfied the political objectives of the G77. Previous research can provide some answers. Studies on comparative CSR and CSR and governments have reported that several states in the Global South exhibit an ongoing ‘war of position’ (see, e.g. Levy, 2008; Levy & Egan, 2003; Moog et al., 2015) on the meaning of corporate partnerships in practice. In the African context, the regulation of TNCs has recently occurred through ethnically and racially based indigenisation policies, such as the Black Economic Empowerment Programme in South Africa, and ‘local content’ policies in extractive sectors in numerous countries on the continent. Through these policies, governments have imposed strict rules on TNCs with respect to resource, skill, and technology transfer (Nilsson, 2023). In addition, CSR by foreign investors has provided rent-seeking opportunities for resource-weak governments to gain resources (Nilsson, 2022). Similarly, in India, Mauritius, and Indonesia, governments have aimed to obtain resources by passing legislation that mandates companies to spend a certain monetary amount on CSR (Gatti et al., 2019; Mahadeo, 2021; Waagstein, 2011). In Bangladesh and Indonesia, states have initiated their own sector-based, multi-stakeholder initiatives in parallel with corporate-driven ‘international’ initiatives (Fougère & Solitander, 2020). Overall, governments in the Global South have substituted, adopted, repurposed, replaced, and rejected private governance norms and standards depending on how they fit with domestic industry strategies and states’ developmental capacity (Marques & Eberlein, 2021). All of these national-level political strategies echo the political agenda of the G77 within the UN.

The Limits of Agonistic Deliberation

With this article, we also contribute to business ethics studies engaging with dissensus. When combining our UN-level study with previous agonistic studies of multi-stakeholder partnerships (Fougère & Solitander, 2020; Dawkins, 2015, 2021, 2022), we can concur that an insistence on consensus exists at both the global and UN levels when agreeing on the partnership approach and when partnerships are practised. Because of this insistence on consensus by powerful actors, there is a high risk that more vulnerable actors’ interests will be excluded or accommodated in ways that do not fundamentally address them. At both levels, we believe that an affirmation of dissensus (Whelan, 2013) is desirable for more egalitarian approaches and practices to emerge.

However, based on our analysis, we can assume that an explicit expression of dissensus is not sufficient. In fact, from the viewpoint of ‘agonistic deliberation’ advanced by Brand et al. (2020), the UNGA seems to operate quite well. The UNGA and its committees are the only arenas in global politics where all states, including the less powerful ones, are able to vocalise their opinions and express dissensus. The principle of sovereignty grants small states a certain degree of protection to voice their standpoints. Yet, according to our analysis, integrating expressed dissensus into new guidelines and resolution texts without addressing the underlying power asymmetries, a practice termed ‘hegemonic accommodation’ (Levy & Kaplan, 2008; Levy & Scully, 2007; Moog et al., 2015), may not be sufficient to achieve a transformation into more fundamentally egalitarian institutions and practices.

These insights bring us to the importance of more critical approaches to the ethics of dissensus that take issue with the way in which the contemporary politics of consensus—whether in different societies, in transnational multi-stakeholder initiatives, or on the global plane, including in the UN—are tightly coupled with overwhelming corporate power (Fougère & Solitander, 2020; Brown & Tregidga, 2017; Dawkins, 2015; Rhodes et al., 2020). The fact that the global consensus on partnerships with businesses has been established and pursued by the Global North and adjacent corporate powers (Banerjee, 2008; Ferns & Amaeshi, 2019; Rowe, 2005; Sauvant, 2015) has raised fears amongst Global South states, especially the most vulnerable, least developed, and small island states. Therefore, for more egalitarian (global) institutions and partnership arrangements to emerge, ethical governance solutions should interrogate the totalising tendencies of corporate power, where no viewpoints other than those supporting corporate interests are considered relevant or legitimate. Some practical implications of this argument are discussed below.

Implications

From the viewpoint of the UN and the material analysed in this article, a normative commitment to dissensus would practically mean that the decision-making organs within the business-dominated UNGC would have to be reformed to include Global South states. The UN-level analysis also suggests that the actual setup and practice of partnerships should feature a stronger commitment of corporations to national development plans in addition to resource, skill, and technology transfer and robust accountability mechanisms. Furthermore, partnerships should be transparent to Global South states, who should have access to information for monitoring purposes. Multi-stakeholder partnerships should also incorporate Global South interests on equal footing. Depending on the context, this effort could entail more public scrutiny by democratic Global South state actors or the inclusion of vulnerable communities through means other than merely inviting international NGOs.

Overall, unpacking power relations and explicitly addressing dissensus within the partnership agenda and related practices requires fundamental shifts in whose voices are heard, who has representation, and whose needs and interests are addressed. We are still far from Mouffe’s (2013) ideal of an agonistic world order with a pluralisation of hegemonies, which envisions a diversity of poles encountering each other without any one of them having the pretence of superiority over the others. Abiding to a multipolar agonistic world order would mean the normalisation of the aims, principles, values, and practices of business partnerships and CSR being constantly negotiated and contested by equal actors on different scales and at various sites of power.

Based on this article, we can identify two potential directions for future research. First, the analysis for this article was performed on written UNGA documents. The limitation of this approach is that these documents do not grasp informal negotiations that occur behind the scenes in the resolution processes. Hence, to understand processes of accommodation and exclusion in more detail, research using different methods, such as interviews or observation, could be fruitful.

Second, this article has examined materials from the past decade which reveal numerous changes both on the North–South axis and within the Global South. These changes deserve further attention. The world system as we have known it since the end of the Cold War is currently at a breaking point, with increased polarisation amongst states, resistance to the Global North-led hegemony, support for populist, anti-West politics, and (geo)politicisation of issues ranging from human rights to global value chains. In this context, criticism of the UN’s partnership approach can become harsher, and attempts to ignore or re-define the dominant meanings and practices of responsible business are likely to increase. In addition, in the past few years, Europe has taken a regulatory approach to corporations and CSR by imposing several pieces of legislation that span value chains to the Global South. In light of these changes, future research could investigate the implications of these regulatory changes for the UN’s approach to businesses, how alliances or confrontation develop across the North–South divide, or how corporate power across this divide manifests today, when many large TNCs originate from BRICS countries.