Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addresses the UN Security Council at the UN headquarters. Sept., 2015. Kevin Hagen / Press Association. All right reserved.In the past two years governments have
negotiated a new international structure for sustainable development that seeks
to integrate social, economic, and environmental matters in a new fashion. The
process resulted in replacing the Commission on Sustainable Development with a High-Level
Political Forum and a reformed ECOSOC and inviting multi-stakeholder bodies to
take the lead in implementing key areas of the new 2030 Agenda. The General
Assembly has separately adopted three resolutions on global governance since
2012 [i]. Meanwhile complaints continue
to multiply about the failures of the United Nations and more broadly the UN
system.
In 2020 the UN will be 75 years old. Its
birth, as it were, began seriously in 1943 well before the outcome of WWII was
clear. The driving goals for the design of the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs)
were to prevent another war between major powers, to avoid another Depression
and to not replicate the League of Nations.
By the time the UN Charter was adopted,
these concerns were not equally important – only the Security Council dealing
with war and peace was given mandatory authority. Over the decades, the major
aspiration of the international community shifted. As new global aspirations
were identified, new, largely autonomous institutions were built. And, there were regular reform efforts,[ii] as each generation recognized
that the global governance system was not keeping up with the needs of the
world. The agreements about the new institutional structures for the 2030 Sustainable
Development Goals, the frustrated efforts to ‘reform’ the Security Council and
the Secretary General’s selection process, and the thwarted effort to fix the
governance at the IMF/World Bank are all part of this tradition.
Accusers
and defenders
The complaints about the UN are not
trivial. There are charges that the UN system is dysfunctional in meeting its
assigned goals; that the UN is inefficient and ineffective with its resources;
that its economic and social governance system is fundamentally out of date; and
that peace keeping and peace building functions have not prevented genocides and
major military interventions. And that Government appeals for additional multi-stakeholder
governance bodies are even moving agenda items off the UN’s radar. At any UN
system meeting, one can hear more critiques in the coffee bars; at any time one
can read and listen to more weaknesses in even otherwise friendly media; and at
any gathering of scholars the starting point more often than not is that the UN
is a structural failure.
Defenders of multilateralism have solid
replies to many of these critiques – the money and capacity to run an
international program is just not provided by governments; there has also been
a large gap between the aspirations projected onto the UN system and the willingness of countries to make it
happen; the five permanent members of the Security Council did or didn’t do
something in their own ‘national’ interest; the Secretariats of the UN system
have done some amazing things that are just not reported in the media; and, if
the UN and the specialized agencies didn’t exist, they would have to be created.
For the United Nations’ birthday at 75, it
would be a good idea to consider what the UN system should look like based on the
lessons learnt since 1945. What if one could complement the proliferation of
complaints about the limitations of the post WWII institutions with a
proliferation of ideas for what international governance post- globalization
ought to look like. As with the 1943 discussions about the UN, the Havana
Declaration, the Bretton Woods agreements, and the founding meetings for all
the other existing international organizations, the thinking about the way to
balance goals, governance, institutions, and power takes a good deal of time
and intellectual creativity.
Democratic
options?
So what if there was a clean slate (say the
1943 discussions did not result in the current legacy of institutions), what
would global governance look like today? Or put in another way what are the
current aspirations expected from the ‘international community’, what are the
current powerful forces that need to be accommodated, and what are the democratic
options for a world with nine billion people, tens of thousands of
‘multinational corporations’, and millions of ‘civil society’ organizations?
In some ways, the challenge facing leaders
in earlier generations was easier than a clean slate challenge is now. At the
end of the 1940s there was only one strong military and economic power, not a
multipolar world with hundreds of economic bodies and military alliances. The
League of Nations had truly collapsed, and was not just collapsing, as some
contemporary critics say the UN system is.
In 1943 and in the following decades, governments
were the only formal actors in global governance. Clearly this is no longer the
case. MNCs are clearly major actors in global governance and, in the view of
many, have eclipsed nation-states in power and ability to set and adapt the
international agenda. And some civil society organizations too have become
major actors in global governance in their own right. One international effect
of the Thatcher-Reagan de-regulation drives and the increasing assertiveness of
MNCs in global governance is that governments in the UN system have stepped further
back from governing globalization. In their 2009 report, the World Economic
Forum argues that government-centric governance for major issues should be
replaced by a multi-stakeholder-centric system.[iii]
In addition the world today is
institutionally and technologically more complex than it was at the end of
WWII. Globalization, climate change, interlocked financial systems, multiple
regional wars, high speed internet realities, are just a few of these more
complex aspects. Re-visioning a democratic global governance system today is
indeed a daunting challenge, a challenge that Davos did take up in its 1 ½-year
policy study.
Not surprisingly the Davos view is that MNCs
should be more engaged in global governance, not less. An alternative argument
is that MNC engagement in global governance is a key stumbling block to a more
democratic global governance system.
As an example of how crucial it is to
conceptualize a different democratic global governance system that could be the
basis for the future, one could look at what it would take to constrain the
role of MNCs in global governance. Were one examining this phenomenon in an
OECD country, one could describe this as addressing ‘corporate capture of the
regulatory process’. From the vantage-point of global civil society and social
campaigns, this undertaking is fundamentally about how to level the playing
field in global governance. From the perspective of international law, one
could describe this challenge as preventing domestic corporate personhood from morphing
on the international level to corporate governors.
In the spirit of starting from a blank
slate, this paper presents four options for controlling corporate dominance
over global governance.
Option A:
One option is to
rebuild the UN system, giving economic, environmental, social and gender
decision-making the same legal mandatory status as decision-making in the
Security Council, so that multilateralism could govern globalisation. Under
this option the specialized agencies which deal with these issues would report
to the new body with the integrated and legal capacity to adopt decisions binding
on government members. This mandatory power on governments, similar to that now
held by the Security Council, could only be invoked under special circumstances
such as by a supermajority vote on the new Council.
Following the Mexican,
Asian, and 2009 financial crises, a number of governments and independent
experts called for an Economic Security Council. Option A is built on this
rationale but goes a step further in institutionalising not just economic security
matters but also the security of social,
environmental, and gender issues.
UN Charter revision is
an unusual process. It has mostly been ‘revised’ not by the formal amendment
process, as laid out in the Charter, but by a process called ‘Charter
modification by practice’. One good example of this modification-by-practice is
that two veto-members of the Security Council named in the Charter, the
Republic of China and the USSR, were simply replaced by the People’s Republic
of China and Russia without any formal vote when reality demanded it. Were the
General Assembly to treat resolutions on these four sectors that were adopted
by a supermajority differently, it could build into a practice where these
resolutions had enhanced obligation on governments.
Option B:
A second option could
be to outlaw MNCs’ involvement in global policy-making and programme
implementation, as is done in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [iv]. This approach would reverse the commitments
of two Secretaries-General to the self-standing Global Compact and the tenor of
six General Assembly resolutions on ‘partnership’ with the private sector. It
would also reverse a decade or more of public-private partnership offices in
almost all UN specialized agencies and programmes. The rationale for this
approach is the generally accepted position that in national democracies the
elected governing authority is an arbiter between, amongst others, the private
sector and employees, customers, and others impacted by the private sector. In
the international sphere, the UN system could be envisaged in an analogous
role.
Two measures
transitional to re-gaining the autonomy of the intergovernmental process and
programs from corporate interference could be put in place. One transitional
measure would be the establishment of legal standards for selecting those MNCs that
supply goods or services to the UN or make proposals for donations to the UN bodies.
MNCs routinely include such due diligence criteria in
their supply contracts, their evaluations of potential mergers, and their
reputational risk assessments. The second option would bring this routine
corporate practice into the global governance space. The
minimal criteria for the selection of acceptable MNCs could include that the firm:
- works in conformity with the UN
Charter or - has endorsed or accepted widely
accepted human rights principles (such as the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights); - is not under indictment for
financial or moral matters - is not seen as working against
a Security Council decision or as having an active role in a regional war; - is not involved in trafficking
of persons, weapons, or banned products - is not involved in any industry
whose core business activity (e.g. tobacco sales) are antithetical to the
accomplishment of UN system goals - is not undertaking work with the
UN to counter adverse brand associations elsewhere; or - is undertaking engagement with
the UN to gain market dominance or market share, particularly in developing
countries.
Whether these specific criteria are
appropriate or comprehensive should be decided by an intergovernmental process.
What is crucial is that the UN establish explicit standards for more limited
engagement with MNCs and utilize these standards in its daily activities.
To make the standards fair and effective,
the UN system could have a public body that welcomed news of corporate
activities that might abridge the standards, and a separate body that provided
MNCs with a public opportunity to challenge an adverse judgement. This approach
would reverse the no-standards approach central to the functioning of the
Global Compact and various UN system offices seeking corporate donations.
A second transitional practice for option B would
be to revisit the UN funding formula and the level of overall core and program budget
requirements for the UN system. One leverage that MNCs exert over the UN system
is created from the mismatch between the aspirations of the world community and
the resources necessary to address these expectations. In such a period of
program conflict, the lore of accepting MNC financial and in-kind contributions
to ‘meet a need’ can be overwhelmingly difficult to resist. Most such proposed
project contributions may be very large for a UN agency but relatively small financially
for a global firm and these proposed contributions inherently come with
programmatic and policy conditions. Were governments to frankly address the
under-funding of the global system, it would temper a powerful MNC lever over
the UN system.
Option C:
A third option to
constrain the engagement of the MNCs with the UN system is to create a quite
different governance arrangement. If one considers that governments in the
international system are not now able on their own to control the engagement of
MNCs in global governance, a reconfigured international governance structure
that brought civil society into the formal process could serve as a
counterweight to MNC intrusions.
In this quite
provocative option, a self-standing international civil society body could
bring legitimate public scrutiny to MNC activities in global governance. In short,
as governments forces are apparently too weak to assert effective global
governance, it may be time to legally recognise the de facto status that civil society and MNCs have in global
decision-making and design a new global institution that incorporates an
appropriate political balance between these sectors as a complement to the
existing government-based UN system. The
model here is the International Labour Organization with
its tripartite governance system involving joint decision-making by
representatives of employers, workers and governments.
Periodically over the
past 30 years, there have been calls for a parliamentary chamber at the UN[v] and for a civil society chamber at the UN. The
argument in both cases has been to increase the formal presence of these
constituencies in the UN system as a complement to foreign affairs-centered government
representation and to permit greater accountability of the UN system to the
wider society.
This rationale behind
option C for new chambers to contain private sector influence at the UN system
is different. It is premised on the assumption
that open engagement between civil society representatives, government
delegates and corporate executives is a more effective way to deal with un- and
under-disclosed global corporate political roles than the current system.
A first step in this
process could be taken by the Office of the President of the General Assembly
(OPGA). The President could extend invitations to both communities to convene
independent bodies to propose the terms of reference for their chamber, the
financing necessary to secure the independence of the chamber, and the possible
rules of procedure for the selection of delegates and relations between the two
new bodies and the General Assembly. In parallel, the existing General Assembly
Ad Hoc Committee on the Revitalization of the GA, established 7 years ago[vi], could be asked to define
the government perspective on engaging with the two chambers and insuring that
the civil society chamber has sufficient resources and capacities to
effectively serve as a counter-weight to MNCs and be a good partner in
governing globalization.
Option D:
A fourth option is for
governments to adopt a new Vienna Convention specifying the rules for how corporate-centric
multistakeholder groups ought to operate when they expect to be seen as a
legitimate part of a global governance system. This
convention would be a historical extension of the current series of Vienna
Conventions and UN system procedural guides. For example, there are formal
conventions and rules: the Vienna convention on diplomatic rules[vii], another Vienna convention on how to manage conflicts between
different agreements[viii],
and a UN rule book that lay out ways to protect minority views and to ensure a
sense of democratic process at the inter-governmental level.
As multi-stakeholder governance
arrangements are likely to proliferate, one could establish a set of rules to
govern the behavior of legitimate multi-stakeholder governance groups on one
hand and to disempower those multi-stakeholder groups that are really disguised
oligopolies or self-interested groups intent on taking over governance of
pressing public concerns without meaningful engagement with the multilateralism.
Option D could not stop a particular multi-stakeholder group. But it could set
a government-authorized standard for representation as well as the basis for internal democratic rules for those
multi-stakeholder bodies that seek to be recognized as part of the global
governance community.
Besides the legal principles embedded in
the existing Vienna conventions, a new multistakeholder convention could draw
on the experiences of both currently functioning multi-stakeholder groups with
respectable public records (e.g. the work of the Forest Stewardship Council in
setting standards for the trade in sustainably harvested wood products) as well
as some multistakeholder groups with decades of practice (e.g. the
International Labour Organization).
An appropriate rule book on
multi-stakeholder governance would address a range of issues such as (1) what
are the appropriate categories of participants in a given multi-stakeholder
group; (2) how should MSGs address the inherent power balance between these categories;
(3) what are correct standards –or should there be standards – to select
appropriate participants for each category; (4) who selects the organizations
to represent each participant category; (5) what are the de facto terms of reference for the group; (6) where does the cash
involved come from and go to; (7) what is the internal decision-making process
for the multi-stakeholder group; and (8) what are its external obligations.[ix]
Pushes and pull for each option
Reform of the current
structure of global governance will not come enthusiastically or voluntarily
from ministries of foreign affairs or from within the UN system.
After World War II, the most powerful
governments created the Security Council with special seats for themselves, and
the Bretton Woods Institutions with special voting powers for themselves. A few
years later, these governments also agreed to the Universal Declaration on
Human Rights, putting in place principles to constrain how governments can
treat their own citizens, and expressing what citizens can appropriately expect
from governments.
Changing the engagement
of MNCs with the international system can however evolve from a number of
different directions. First, a shock on the order of magnitude of a economic
depression, global ecological crisis, or a war can prompt rethinking of the institutional
arrangements for the intergovernmental system. Following the start of the 2008/2009
crisis, key heads of state were calling for a new Bretton Woods-type
conference. Second, it could evolve from citizen campaigns and social movements
that insist on a completely new institutional arrangement to counter corporate
influence in global decision-making. And third, it may be provoked by the
exposes of an egregious multinational corporations overstepping appropriate
bounds, say by campaigning for a specific new Secretary-General, such that
those committed to multilateralism recognize that they need new allies to
counter-balance the advance of multinational corporations and multi-stakeholder
governance groups in global governance.
From whatever
direction the pressure comes to create a post WWII-based governance arrangement,
a package of democratic alternative proposals needs to be well formulated well
in advance. As a
result of the last financial crises, the World Economic Forum prepared recommendation
on how they would want the next system of global governance to operate.[x] Those whose focus is more
clearly on democracy, equity, and environmental security need independently to imagine
how a different system could be designed.
[i] A/
65/94 of 8 Dec 2010; A/66/256 The United Nations in global
governance, 16 March 2012; A/67/289 The United Nations in global economic
governance 9 July 2013
[ii]
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the General
Assembly has been in place for over half a decade.
[iii]
Harris Gleckman, Readers’ Guide : Global Redesign Initiative, website of the
Center for Governance and Sustainability, UMass-Boston, www.umb.edu/gri, accessed April 5, 2016
[iv] Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control, 2003. Available at: http://www.who.int/fctc/text_download/en/
[v]
The Hague Institute for Global Justice and the Stimson Center, Confronting the
Crisis of Global Governance, report of the
Commission Global Security, Justice & Governance, A http://www.stimson.org/sites/default/files/file-attachments/Commission_on_Global_Security_Justice%20_Governance.pdf
, June 2015, accessed April 5, 2016
[vi]
Center for UN Reform Education, Revitalization of the General Assembly, http://www.centerforunreform.org/?q=node/34
accessed 3 April 2016
[vii] Vienna
Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961
[viii]
Vienna
Convention on the law of treaties, 1969
[ix]
For additional background on these issues, see Harris Gleckman,
Multi-stakeholder governance : a corporate push for a new global governance,
Open Democracy, 19 January 2016, https://www.opendemocracy.net/harris-gleckman/multi-stakeholder-governance-corporate-push-for-new-global-governance
, accessed 5 April 2016
[x]
Readers’ Guide, op cit.
