Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T22:18:15.262Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Competing Projects in Global Governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2023

Quinn Slobodian
Quinn Slobodian*
Affiliation:
Marion Butler McLean Professor of the History of Ideas, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The twentieth century is a fascinating time to follow the relationship between global governance and firms because of the persistent tension between principles of mass democracy and private ownership and control. It is possible to narrate the entire century as a series of contestations between firms and international organizations. At times, firms have had the upper hand. At other times, the principle of popular sovereignty has threatened the self-perceived rights and prerogatives of business. In my own work, I have homed in on ruptures at two main points.

Type
Roundtable on Capitalism and Global Governance
Information
Business History Review , Volume 97 , Issue 3: Governing Global Capitalism , Autumn 2023 , pp. 626 - 631
Copyright
© 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

75 David and Eichenberger, “‘A World Parliament of Business’?”

76 Röpke, Wilhelm, International Order and Economic Integration (Dordrecht, 1959), 79Google Scholar; Schmitt, Carl, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York, 2003), 137Google Scholar.

77 See Slobodian, Globalists.

78 Bair, Jennifer, “Taking Aim at the New International Economic Order,” in The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, ed. Mirowski, Philip and Plehwe, Dieter (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 347–367CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Cutler, A. Claire, Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy (New York, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogle, Vanessa, “State Rights against Private Capital: The ‘New International Economic Order’ and the Struggle over Aid, Trade, and Foreign Investment, 1962–1981,” Humanity 5, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 211–234CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perrone, Investment Treaties; Tzouvala, Ntina, “The Ordo-liberal Origins of Modern International Investment Law: Constructing Competition on a Global Scale,” in European Yearbook of International Economic Law, ed. Haskell, John D. and Rasulov, Akbar (New York, 2019)Google Scholar.

80 See Ostry, Sylvia, “The Uruguay Round North-South Grand Bargain: Implications for future Negotiations,” in The Political Economy of International Trade Law, ed. Kennedy, Daniel M. and Southwick, James D. (New York, 2002), 285–299CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sell, Susan K., Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 For an example from the NAFTA negotiations, see Fairbrother, Malcolm, Free Traders: Elites, Democracy, and the Rise of Globalization in North America (New York, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the influence of the steel lobby in the US–China trade war, see Quinn Slobodian, “Backlash Against Neoliberal Globalization.”

82 For an incisive critique see Link, Stefan, “How Might 21st-Century De-Globalization Unfold? Some Historical Reflections,” New Global Studies 12, no. 3 (2018): 343–365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 See Anghie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (New York, 2007)Google Scholar; Brabazon, Honor, Neoliberal Legality: Understanding the Role of Law in the Neoliberal Project (London, 2017)Google Scholar; Schneiderman, David, Constitutionalizing Economic Globalization: Investment Rules and Democracy's Promise (New York, 2008)Google Scholar; Vauchez, Antoine and France, Pierre, The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private Finance (Ithaca, 2020)Google Scholar.

84 See Chorev, Nitsan, Remaking U.S. Trade Policy: From Protectionism to Globalization (Ithaca, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopewell, Kristen, Breaking the WTO: How Emerging Powers Disrupted the Neoliberal Project (Stanford, 2016)Google Scholar.

85 For the Anglo-American world order, see Martin, Jamie, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Economic Governance (Cambridge, MA, 2022)Google Scholar; Miles, Kate, The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment and the Safeguarding of Capita (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On China, see Carrai, Maria Adele, Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840 (Cambridge, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rithmire, Meg, “Going Out or Opting Out? Capital, Political Vulnerability, and the State in China's Outward Investment,” HBS Working Paper, no. 20-009 (2021)Google Scholar.

86 See, e.g., Lee, Christopher J., ed., Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens, 2010)Google Scholar; Prashad, Vijay, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

87 See, e.g., Slobodian, Quinn, Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham, 2012)Google Scholar; Mills, Sean, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Young, Cynthia A., Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left (Durham, 2006)Google Scholar.

88 See Gindin, Sam and Panitch, Leo, The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Brooklyn, 2012)Google Scholar.

89 Pistor, Katharina, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton, 2019)Google Scholar.

90 An influential book in this context was Graeber, David, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, 2011)Google Scholar.