Rival Worlds and the Place of the Corporation in International Law

Abstract

Struggles ‘over’ international law in the period between 1955 and 1974 should be understood not as a battle to control a pre-existing international law, but as marking a series of encounters between rival practices of world-making, each travelling with rival accounts of international law. The question of how to conceptualize the corporation, and its proper relation to law and state, was a key element of those rival accounts. In this chapter, we trace the (successful) effort to establish the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations, and the (unsuccessful) attempt to draft a binding convention. In this telling institutional moment, the struggle over the proper understanding of the relationship between international law, the state, and the corporation, which travels was also a struggle over the authorship of worlds, and the authority to govern them. Paying attention to such practices shows us that the battle lines were drawn in ways that upset the comfortable rehearsal of a North-South divide. Anti-colonial struggles, the incipient ‘Cold War’, the invention of ‘Development’, and the implementation of a (Marshall) plan to (re)construct Europe produced unexpected commonalities that included coalitions across North and South and instructive alliances between ‘public’ and ‘private’ actors. Slowing down our study of this moment reveals that much of what was at stake then remains so today, and that other worlds are still possible.

FPIC, international law, social space, and indigenous territories in FPIC during extractive projects in Latin America. A romantic or tragic story?

“…Although between the 1950s and 1970s, the "Third world" attempted to dispute the development discourse, linking it with "self-determination", economic independence, regulation of transnational capital, fair trade and debt (Bandung conference, UNGA Resolution 1960 and the attempts to regulate international trade through UNCTAD), this was strongly contested, limited and finally defeated by the Global North (Pahuja & Saunders, 2019). Rostow's ideas that development is rather connected to the efforts and capacities of the "underdeveloped countries" themselves rather than to the international asymmetries (Pahuja & Saunders, 2019;Chaturvedy, 2014;Whyte, 2018;Rist, 2008) started to be hegemonic.…”

“…Although between the 1950s and 1970s, the "Third world" attempted to dispute the development discourse, linking it with "self-determination", economic independence, regulation of transnational capital, fair trade and debt (Bandung conference, UNGA Resolution 1960 and the attempts to regulate international trade through UNCTAD), this was strongly contested, limited and finally defeated by the Global North (Pahuja & Saunders, 2019). Rostow's ideas that development is rather connected to the efforts and capacities of the "underdeveloped countries" themselves rather than to the international asymmetries (Pahuja & Saunders, 2019;Chaturvedy, 2014;Whyte, 2018;Rist, 2008) started to be hegemonic. During the beginning of the neoliberal project, the "Third-Worldist" ideas (including dependency theory) were politically buried, and the world-system and international law managed to adjust even (junio -noviembre 2022) FPIC, international law, social space, and indigenous territories in FPIC during extractive projects in Latin America.…”

The Contested Freedom of the Moderns

“…differ pending on a given context, having new members comply with a set of given norms that establish the order of an international organization will invariably involve the subordination and suppression of cultural diversity. 60 The procedure has been perpetuated through countless contracts on membership in international organizations of the UN system, as well as regional organizations such as the quasi-constitutional nonstate polity of the European Union (EU), for example. While critical voices have pointed to the importance of taking "contested compliance" more seriously as "interventions in the normative structure of world politics" that matter for long-term assessments of normative sustainability in contexts of regional and global, 61 cultural recognition is predominantly approached as a problem rather than an opportunity for transformative change 62 .…”

Democratic Multiplicity

“…As opposed to an enclosing and self-concealing structure, a relational ontology is characterized by its self-disclosure (or deparochialization) and an openness to encountering and engaging difference through "reciprocal elucidation." 60 By a relational logic, one can only understand and know themselves through their relationships with others. For this reason, thinkers from across a diversity of traditions (Borrows, Derrida, Lorde, Foucault, Scharmer and Tully, to 57 Tully, "Deparochializing Political Theory," 64.…”