Agenda setting in international and multilateral spaces
International, multilateral, multi-stakeholder, national, sectoral, and virtually any space of dialogue, negotiation, and decision-making can be captured — at a minimum — ideologically.
Corporations seek to control the generation of knowledge, concentrate communication mechanisms, sponsor events, and generally co-opt processes that affect their interests.
The Corporate Accountability Working Group (CAWG), an integral part of the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net), identifies various forms of corporate capture in multilateral spaces, such as political and legislative interference, the revolving door phenomenon (where corporate employees become government representatives at the United Nations, for example), and economic diplomacy in which States prioritize corporate elites’ interests over the rights of the population.
Following a United Nations convening in Chile, theLatin American Platform on Business and Human Rights stated: “We are highly concerned that corporate capture is increasingly a tool present in some settings of the [U.N.]; therefore, in response to the principles of transparency and accountability, it is necessary that the Working Group on Business and Rights Humans publish the origin of its funding and how it is implemented in its strategic agenda, including the development of regional and global forums.”
Corporate capture is normalized through the discourse and institutions of multi-stakeholderism, which involves corporations in policy formulation and increases their influence in decision-making. In large part, this type of corporate capture is driven by the dependence of multilateral institutions on private financing due to States’ failures to pay their contributions, earmarking funds to serve corporate interests, and falling tax revenues resulting from neoliberal policies.
Other examples include the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), founded by the world’s largest polluters, and its influence within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. At COP25 in Madrid, the IETA’s meddling was such that CSOs formed the Kick Big Polluters Out Coalition precisely to keep corporations out of climate change agreements. Also, the World Economic Forum (WEF) provides corporations with preferential access to the U.N. system at the expense of States and public actors, weakening the mandate and independence of the UN. Similarly, the partnership between the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and CropLife International — a trade association representing pesticide and biotechnology industries — could undermine the FAO’s ability to make independent decisions. Lastly, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) signed an agreement with Microsoft in which the corporation offered 5 million USD to support OHCHR, which could compromise the OHCHR’s activities scrutinizing Microsoft.