Democracy, Legitimacy, and the Standing of the Corporation in Corporate Global Governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Rob Barlow ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Csr ◽  
Multi Stakeholder

Political CSR scholars have sought to apply the concept of deliberative democracy to the practice of global corporate engagement with stakeholders. Recently, much of this work has focused on the conditions under which the decisions made within multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI’s) should be considered democratically legitimate while relatively less attention has been paid to the practical benefits that such engagements can bring for their effectiveness when properly structured. The arguments in this essay support a shift in focus away from the former and towards the latter.

Global Justice and International Business

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis G. Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
International Business ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Csr ◽  
Satisfactory Account ◽  
Business Enterprises ◽  
Governance Institutions

ABSTRACT:Little theoretical attention has been paid to the question of what obligations corporations and other business enterprises have to the four billion people living at the base of the global economic pyramid. This article makes several theoretical contributions to this topic. First, it is argued that corporations are properly understood as agents of global justice. Second, the legitimacy of global governance institutions and the legitimacy of corporations and other business enterprises are distinguished. Third, it is argued that a deliberative democracy model of corporate legitimacy defended by theorists of political CSR is unsatisfactory. Fourth, it is argued that a Rawlsian theoretical framework fails to provide a satisfactory account of the obligations of corporations regarding global justice. Finally, an ethical conception of CSR grounded in an appropriately modest set of duties tied to corporate relationships is then defended. This position is cosmopolitan in scope and grounded in overlapping arguments for human rights.

A Model for Global Governance of Platforms

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-279
Author(s):  
Robert Fay
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Work Shop ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
Governance Arrangements ◽  
Current Governance

Digital platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and a more recent entrant, Zoom, have provided core societal functions that have enabled us to work, shop, educate ourselves and our children, run businesses, maintain social contact, and receive and disseminate information. At the same time, the uses of these technologies have led to elevated concerns in areas such as surveillance, cyber risks, democracy, public health, competition and monopoly power, and economic prosperity. Current governance arrangements are incoherent and fragmented nationally and internationally—where they even exist. At the same time, they typically reflect vested state and corporate interests that can be very difficult to challenge. The way forward is to create a new institution for the digital realm: a Digital Stability Board (DSB) that would be a multi-stakeholder forum with a remit to create global governance for big data, AI, and the digital platforms, while allowing national variation to reflect different values and cultures while avoiding a race to the bottom in governance. Taking concerted and coordinated action on global governance under a structure such as a DSB will help to ensure that the benefits of the platforms are magnified, and the risks minimized individually and globally.

scholarly journals Dissent in Consensusland: An Agonistic Problematization of Multi-stakeholder Governance

2019 ◽  
Vol 164 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Fougère ◽  
Nikodemus Solitander
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Pressure Response ◽  
Business And Society ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Political Csr ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Building Safety ◽  
Multi Stakeholder

AbstractMulti-stakeholder initiatives involve actors from several spheres of society (market, civil society and state) in collaborative arrangements to reach objectives typically related to sustainable development. In political CSR literature, these arrangements have been framed as improvements to transnational governance and as being somehow democratic. We draw on Mouffe’s works on agonistic pluralism to problematize the notion that consensus-led multi-stakeholder initiatives bring more democratic control on corporate power. We examine two initiatives which address two very different issue areas: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (The Accord). We map the different kinds of adversarial relations involved in connection with the issues meant to be governed by the two initiatives, and find those adversarial relations to take six main shapes, affecting the initiatives in different ways: (1) competing regulatory initiatives; (2) pressure-response relations within multi-stakeholder initiatives; (3) pressure-response relations between NGOs and states through multi-stakeholder initiatives; (4) collaboration and competition between multi-stakeholder initiatives and states; (5) pressure-response relations between civil society actors and multi-stakeholder initiatives; and (6) counter-hegemonic movements against multi-stakeholder initiatives as hegemonic projects. We conclude that multi-stakeholder initiatives cannot be democratic by themselves, and we argue that business and society researchers should not look at democracy or politics only internally to these initiatives, but rather study how issue areas are regulated through interactions between a variety of actors—both within and without the multi-stakeholder initiatives—who get to have a legitimate voice in this regulation.

The Problem of Environmental Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-317
Author(s):  
Eric Pommier ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Effective Development ◽  
Environmental Democracy

The work of Hans Jonas’ has been largely overlooked by environmental philosophers. His Principle of Responsibility can help guide effective development of political institutions for environmental purposes. It is possible to use this principle to develop a deliberative and environmental conception of democracy. Some implications of the social contract framework of deliberative democracy show that Jonas’ conceptualization of responsibility leads to an environmental and deliberative conception of democracy by accommodating different citizens’ senses of the good in terms of an environmentally conceived global governance.

Deliberation and Global Governance

2018 ◽  
pp. 439-452
Author(s):  
Jens Steffek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Stakeholder Networks ◽  
Current State ◽  
The People ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Multi Stakeholder

Conceptions of deliberative or discursive democracy are applied increasingly also to global governance institutions, typically coupled with calls for more participation and civil society access. Critics argue, however, that global political institutions cannot accommodate meaningful practices of deliberation and participation. In this chapter I review the current state of this controversy. I first disentangle several promises of deliberation in global governance and distinguish micro and macro conceptions of deliberation. I then scrutinize deliberative practices as they currently exist in intergovernmental negotiation and multi-stakeholder networks. A number of problems seem to compromise the democratizing potential of these practices: enduring asymmetries in power and status; high levels of expertise as precondition for participation; disconnect between micro-settings of deliberation and macro-level debates. I conclude that existing forms of global deliberation may increase the epistemic quality of decisions made for the people but should not be interpreted as democratic self-governance by the people.

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