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The business–peace nexus: ‘business for peace’ and the reconfiguration of the public/private divide in global governance

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Abstract

This article explores the implications of ‘business for peace’ (B4P), a new global governance paradigm that aims to put international businesses at the frontline of peace, stability and development efforts in fragile and conflict-affected states. This article argues that B4P entails a shift in the balance between public and private authority across what we coin the ‘business–peace nexus’ and which comprises corporate peacebuilding activities across different spatial scales and institutional settings. We explore B4P’s agency across two distinct nodes in this nexus—in global peacebuilding and development architectures, and in local peacebuilding settings in the Democratic Republic of Congo—to articulate the B4P paradigm’s multiple and contradictory effects on the balance between public and private authority in contemporary peacebuilding. On the one hand, B4P tips institutional scales towards the public by embedding corporations within public accountability structures. On the other hand, by legitimising businesses as peace actors, the B4P framework risks institutionalising asymmetrical encounters between firms and people affected by their operations. We deploy the term ‘asymmetrical governance’ to explain how the amalgamation of global and national, public and private into the operational presence of corporations skews the balance of power in their encounters with local populations.

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Notes

  1. Source: UNGC B4P website, available at https://www.unglobalcompact.org/library/381 [last accessed on 23 October 2017].

  2. The UN initiative aside, Norway launched a Business for Peace Foundation in 2007, European business leaders formulated the Ypres Manifesto on Business for Peace in 2014, and Sri Lanka has had a Business for Peace Alliance since 2002. Regional and national businesses as well as small and medium enterprises also participate in the UNGC B4P project, but we exclude them from discussion as MNCs are the primary focus and driver of B4P, and MNCs are typically more engaged with the global governance aspects of peacebuilding than national firms, which give MNCs outsize importance. B4P can thus be seen in this article as representative of a broader set of business ventures in peacebuilding.

  3. There is, of course, significant variation in MNCs within sectors, between sectors, and even within departments of specific firms, thus making any generalisation about ‘what MNCs believe’ or ‘what MNCs do’ inherently problematic and potentially leading towards over-generalisation. To better inform our theoretical development, we thus use examples wherever possible to show the trends of MNC action, using relevant literature to illustrate how peace issues are reflective of broader changes in corporate culture.

  4. We prefer the notion of the ‘nexus’ over the equally productive concepts of ‘network’ (Callaghy et al. 2001) and ‘assemblage’ (Abrahamsen and Williams 2009) as we aim to single out the interface between corporate and peacebuilding actors among the many associations that make up the tangled web of peacekeeping worlds. The notion of business and peace forming a nexus was first coined—but not developed further—in Ford (2015, p. 21).

  5. United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office, Peacebuilding FAQ, available at http://www.un.org/en/peacebuilding/pbso/faq.shtml [last visited on 23 October 2017].

  6. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2001/mar/30/guardianletters2 [last accessed on 23 October 2017].

  7. Western-owned MNCs are of course not the only MNCs operating in such areas, and Chinese and Indian MNCs in particular have operational philosophies and action in conflict zones that are worthy of significant forward study. However, as they have had historically less engagement with international NGOs and the UN than their Western counterparts, we exclude these promising actors of study (and national/regional private sector actors as well) from the argument at hand for space and coherency reasons.

  8. Ibid.

  9. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/participants [last accessed on 23 October 2017].

  10. Source: interviews at UN B4P inaugural meeting, Istanbul 2014. Also see Gilboa et al. (2016).

  11. The yawning gap between the number of signatories in the UNGC and B4P may be seen as a result of the B4P platform’s overlap with the UNGC (and company belief that UNGC participation is enough for peace and development), or there may be larger structural risk issues that influence such choices. The topic is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper but future empirical research on firm choices to participate in such ventures may prove insightful. Thanks to anonymous reviewer for this point.

  12. Miklian (2018); also see Carroll (2015).

  13. https://3blmedia.com/News/CSR/Business-Peace-Platform-Unveiled-UN-Global-Compact-Leaders-Summit [last accessed on 23 October 2017].

  14. Note that of the thousands of UNGC business signatories—including 1200 UN–business partnerships for conflict-affected regions under the ‘Responsible Businesses Advancing Peace’ program (UNGC 2013b)—none have yet been considered to have violated the ‘Guidance on Responsible Business in Conflict-Affected & High-Risk Areas’ framework, indicating the persistence of discrepancies between such discursive politics and on-the-ground practices.

  15. Nonetheless, in foregrounding ‘the West’ as a locus of this agenda, they also overlook that many B4P corporations are non-Western. While B4P might be seen as an archetypical neoliberal (Western) strategy to consolidate corporate footholds in conflict settings, three of China’s largest extractives—China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)—have participated in B4P since its inception, although they have not been significantly active members. See footnotes 3 and 7.

  16. Author interview, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, B4P chair, Istanbul, September 2014.

  17. First coined in Holman (2004, p. 417), who mentions it once as a (further undefined) umbrella term for the tendency of ‘asymmetrical regulation’, whereby upscaling of economic regulation to the EU level is accompanied by social deregulation at the national level.

  18. Source: interview G4S, Goma, November 2015.

  19. http://www.g4s.com/en/Social%20Responsibility/Our%20commitment%20and%20approach/Case%20Studies/Business%20for%20peace/ [last accessed on 23 October 2017].

  20. Such initiatives may themselves be increasingly vulnerable in the coming years to corporate influence with the USA’s current withdrawal in leadership and participation. A morphing from the current framework is likely regardless, perhaps shifting back to national-level oversight as Canada has recently attempted with its Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) watchdog (guided by John Ruggie).

  21. Source: author interview, Paris, 2015.

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Interviews

  • Interviews with business leaders at UN B4P inaugural meeting, Istanbul, September 2014.

  • Interview, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, B4P chair, Istanbul, September 2014.

  • Interview with mining executive, OECD supply chain meeting, Paris, April 2015.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Cindy Horst, Jennifer Oetzel, Oystein Rolandsen, Greg Reichberg, Brian Ganson and the anonymous reviewers for their insights and comments. Any errors remain ours alone. We also thank the Research Council of Norway for funding through the NORGLOBAL programme.

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Schouten, P., Miklian, J. The business–peace nexus: ‘business for peace’ and the reconfiguration of the public/private divide in global governance. J Int Relat Dev 23, 414–435 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0144-2

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