Private Actors

The book investigates how transnational forms of corporate regulation affect international, i.e. intergovernmental regulation. It studies the interaction between these two in the global banking industry through case studies of international anti-money laundering and project finance regulation.
Research on transnational regulation is proliferating in recent years and in many disciplines, prominently including International Relations (IR). The phenomenon is, however, rarely studied with a traditional IR perspective and mindset but rather, through the more recent frames of ‘global governance’ and ‘private authority’. Applying the concept of ‘international legalization’ to the study of transnational regulation, however, moves the latter into the heart of IR research.

More precisely, the book’s research question may be summarized as: What is the impact of industry self-regulation on international legalization?


Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Industry Self-Regulation: Soft Rules for Corporations
3. The Theoretical Framework: Legalization as Hard Rules for States?
4. A Brief History of Governance in the Financial Sector
5. Anti-Money Laundering and the Wolfsberg Principles
6. Legalization of Anti-Money Laundering
7. Environmental Safeguards and the Equator Principles
8. Legalization of Environmental and Social Safeguards
9. Conclusion: Patterns and Dynamics of Self-Regulatory Impact

Increasing demand for extractive resources, volatile markets and protectionist endeavours are
currently heightening a well-known challenge of the developing world: Countries that
possess significant amounts of natural resource deposits on average achieve lower development
success in economic as well as in political terms. Research on this so called ‘resource
curse’ stresses that effective governance is a key to achieving broad-based development from
resource extraction. Consequently, more and more development actors – donor countries and
their agents as well as NGOs and numerous newly created multi-stakeholder initiatives – are
now focusing their attention on governance of the extractive sector.

This publication is a condensed version of a study prepared for the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The primary goal of this study was
to map the growing field of actors working on development-related questions of natural
resource governance. It also aimed to identify potential partners for GIZ from the universe
of stakeholders. The study provides a conceptual framework
for identifying partnership possibilities between stakeholders in the field of natural
resource governance and applies the framework to a selected number of actors.
The study’s scope is limited to stakeholders that are active on a global scale and to nonrenewable
natural resources (oil, gas, and mining). It distinguishes four major groups of
stakeholders: state actors, business actors, civil society actors, and multi-stakeholder initiatives.

Corporate-community conflict is a constant theme in Peru’s extractive sector and seems to have escalated over the past few years during which violent confrontations between anti-mining/anti-oil protestors and the state’s security forces have resulted in many tragic deaths in Bagua, Espinar and Islay, among others. The most frequent causes of these conflicts are allegations of serious environmental pollution, competition for scarce water resources and distribution of the wealth generated by extractive operations.
Faced with the complex challenge of addressing these underlying issues while maintaining Peru’s attractiveness to foreign investments, the Peruvian government has been fostering a strategy of multi-actor dialogue processes. Numerous so called ‘mesa de diálogo’ or ‘mesa de desarollo’ are now under way across the country’s extractive sector. In the area of mining, one can hardly find a mining company that has operations in Peru and is not currently sitting at any dialogue table, more often one finds a single mine involved in many local level dialogue processes at the same time.
This paper will attempt a (first) analysis about these relatively young processes’ effectiveness and, in particular, their potential for reducing local level conflict and violence. For this purpose, the paper draws on field research conducted in Peru between April and August 2013. It compares the dialogue tables between the Peruvian state, Antamina and the alcaldes of the province of Huari, Ancash with two regional dialogue tables involving Anglo American’s Quellaveco project as well as the Southern Peru Copper Corporation in Moquegua. Drawing on a comparison of these cases and focusing, in particular, on the characteristics of the underlying conflicts, the paper attempts a few tentative propositions about variables that do and variables that do not impact mesa effectiveness.

This paper - unfortunately available in German only - gives a brief overview of the conflict minerals debate and offers a short analysis of Dodd Frank-Act section 1502 and its consequences in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Its main goal is a detailed critique of the proposed EU regulation on "Responsible sourcing of minerals originating in conflict-affected and high-risk areas" and a call upon the EU and its member states to profoundly revise it before adopting it. The main argument is that without obligatory due diligence requirements imposed on all upstream and downstream companies using conflict minerals, the regulation will fail to affect any added value compared to the current state of affairs and, more importantly, any positive change on the ground.

Eine Zweckgemeinschaft, die seit Jahren zu gut funktioniert: Auch beim Projekt der Olympischen Spiele haben der russische Präsident Putin und der tschetschenische Präsident Kadyrow ein gemeinsames Ziel. Die Spiele sollen das neue, moderne und erfolgreiche Russland zeigen, das Kritiker verstummen und alle Neider erblassen lässt. Foto: © dpa-report © 2013 Hessische Stiftung Friedens-und Konfliktforschung N r . 7 / 2 0 1 3

In theoretical terms ‘peace’ remains a largely contested concept. Academics propose competing
definitions and conceptualizations, which possess their own normative and analytical advantages
or disadvantages. Yet despite heated academic and theoretical debates, studies looking at
the empirical understandings of peace and conflict-settlement strategies of different states are
largely missing. In this paper, we set out to cover this gap and ask how similarities and differences
in the actors’ conceptual understandings of peace play themselves out in their agreement
and disagreement over the advocated ‘peace strategies’. Employing qualitative/quantitative content
analysis of the statements made by the representatives of the Russian Federation and the
United States at the UN Security Council, we analyze the debates around four recent and/or
ongoing conflicts (Georgia 2008, Libya 2011, Syria 2011-2014 and Ukraine 2014). The study
reveals that while agreement over the conceptualization of peace does not impede further disagreement
as to the advocated peace strategies, disagreement at the conceptual level breeds
deeper disagreement.