Susanne Soederberg

Taming Corporations or Buttressing Market-Led Development? A Critical Assessment of the Global Compact

Abstract Voluntary-based corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies have become a fashionable response of the business community and international organizations to the growing discontent over flagrant abuses of corporate power against humanity and the environment. A case in point is the Global Compact (Compact or GC), which was forged by the United Nations in 2000. The GC represents the worlds largest initiative and involves a wide range of diverse actors, from mammoth-sized transnational corporations (TNCs) to not-for-profit nongovernmental organizations. This essay looks critically at the GC by identifying the social relations of power and struggles inherent within the initiative, as well as its links to the wider neoliberal-led development agenda. In contrast to the image portrayed by its creators that it is a neutral, inclusive, and progressive exercise in global governance, I argue that the GC is in essence a neoliberal strategy that is a highly exclusionary, corporate-led attempt to legitimate and thus reproduce the growing social power of TNCs across the world, but particularly in the global South. It does so in a twofold manner: first, by institutionalizing and thereby depoliticizing anti-corporate struggles that seek social protection from market forces, and second, by discrediting the drive to tame corporate behaviour through legally binding codes. In doing so, the Compact normalizes and thereby recreates the dominant neoliberal-led development paradigm based on the central premise that, given the ‘correct’ policy framework, the market will be able to provide adequate levels of social protection as it generates economic growth. Las estrategias voluntarias de responsabilidad social empresarial (CSR, por sus siglas en inglés), se han puesto de moda como una respuesta de la comunidad empresarial y las organizaciones internacionales, debido al descontento cada vez mayor sobre los abusos evidentes del poder corporativo contra la humanidad y el medio ambiente. Un ejemplo claro es el Pacto Global (GC, por sus siglas en inglés), el cual fue creado por las Naciones Unidas en el 2000. El Pacto Global representa la mayor iniciativa mundial que incluye un amplio rango de actores diferentes desde corporaciones transnacionales gigantescas (TNCs, por sus siglas en inglés) a organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro y no gubernamentales. Este ensayo analiza críticamente al Pacto Global mediante la identificación tanto de las relaciones sociales del poder y las luchas inherentes dentro de la iniciativa, como la manera como se vincula al plan de desarrollo neoliberal. Yo planteo que el Pacto Global es esencialmente, una estrategia neoliberal altamente excluyente, un intento guiado por las empresas para legitimar y así reproducir el poder social en crecimiento de las TNCs a través del mundo, pero particularmente en el sur global. Lo hace de dos maneras, primero, institucionalizando y por esa razón despolitizando las luchas antiempresariales que buscan protección social de las fuerzas del mercado y segundo, desacreditando la iniciativa para controlar el comportamiento empresarial a través de códigos legalmente comprometedores. Al hacer esto, el Pacto Global normaliza y por lo tanto reproduce el paradigma de desarrollo guiado por un dominio neoliberal con base en la premisa central que, dado el esquema de política ‘correcto’, el mercado puede proveer niveles adecuados de protección social en cuanto genera crecimiento económico.

Gender Equality as Smart Economics? A critique of the 2012 World Development Report

Abstract Business now plays an increasingly prominent role in development. While the implicit links between private actors and international development institutions have been widely debated, the explicit role of financial corporations in shaping official development policy has been less well documented. We employ a feminist Marxian analysis to examine the material and discursive landscape of the 2012 World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development. Its exclusive focus on gender equality as ‘smart economics’, and the central role accorded to leading financial corporations like Goldman Sachs in the formulation of the key World Bank recommendations enable us to explore the changing landscape of the neoliberal corporatisation of development. We argue, first, that the apolitical and ahistorical representation of gender and gender equality in the wdr serves to normalise spaces of informality and insecurity, thereby expunging neoliberal-led capitalist relations of exploitation and domination, which characterise the social context in which many women in the global South live. Second, the wdr represents the interest of corporations in transforming the formerly excluded segments of the South (women) into consumers and entrepreneurs. The wdr thus represents an attempt by the World Bank and its ‘partners’ to deepen and consolidate the fundamental values and tenets of capitalist interests.

A Critique of the Diagnosis and Cure for `Enronitis': The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Neoliberal Governance of Corporate America

The Enron collapse in 2001 represented a high-water mark in the recent round of corporate scandals in the United States. In response to this crisis, the US government introduced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Act or SOX) in July 2002. Until now, the debates have remained silent on the political and social dimensions of the Act. By situating the discourse of corporate governance within the context of capitalist society, I offer an alternative explanation of the role and significance of SOX. I argue that the pre-eminence of the corporate governance framework explains away the deeper causes of crisis by maintaining our focus on the symptoms, such as greed on the part of corporate executives, lack of transparency and an absence of accountability, as opposed to the structural causes connected to neoliberal-led restructuring of capitalist society and the contradictions therein.

Universalising Financial Inclusion and the Securitisation of Development

Abstract In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis the G20 leaders have attempted to universalise financial inclusion as a key development strategy Financial inclusion, which has long been championed by official development institutions as a sound and effective market-based solution to combat poverty, is also now promoted by the G20, not only as a way out of the ongoing global recessionary environment but also as an important scheme to stabilise the world economy. To this end the G20 Financial Inclusion Experts Group forged the G20 Principles for Innovative Financial Inclusion in 2010 (the G20 Principles). Drawing on a historical materialist lens, I argue that the G20 Principles— which represent extensions of, as opposed to a departure from, the neoliberal development project—serve to legitimate, normalise, and consolidate the claims of powerful, transnational capital interests that benefit from finance-led capitalism. The primary way this is achieved is through obscuring and concealing the exploitative relations and speculative tendencies involved in financial inclusion strategies.

The Transnational Debt Architecture and Emerging Markets: the politics of paradoxes and punishment

The Argentine default at the end of 2001 highlighted the ongoing problems plaguing the existing transnational debt architecture, namely the tensions between creditor rights and human rights. While these debates have thrown important light on what needs to be done in terms of improving the transnational debt architecture, few studies have actually attempted to evaluate critically the manner in which transnational debt has been managed since the outset of the Bretton Woods system in 1944. I argue that the postwar informal arrangement governing transnational debt architecture not only helps augment the power of credit to serve as an effective form of social discipline, but that it is also profoundly contradictory. Through an historical survey, spanning the beginning of the Bretton Woods system to the recent Argentine default, I demonstrate that the informal nature of the transnational debt architecture, coupled with the mounting power of global financial capitals over debtor states, has played a major role in bringing about increased levels of volatility and vulnerability in the international credit system.

The Mexican Debtfare State: Dispossession, Micro-Lending, and the Surplus Population

In the context of the 2008 financial crisis and how it has impacted on countries across the globe, it is striking how few scholars have critically analysed why and how past crises have created opportunities for states and capitalists to exploit the so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid consumers’ in the developing world. By situating the analysis within the wider neoliberalization processes, this article seeks to denaturalize the extension of consumer credit to the growing number of informal sector workers who comprise the relative surplus population in Mexico. Drawing on an historical materialist frame, I outline a key feature of the neoliberal Mexican state—what I refer to as the debtfare state—that has served to facilitate accumulation by dispossession strategies. These neoliberal strategies serve to expose and integrate spaces of informality into different facets of the capitalist market, i.e. the credit system, without including them ‘inside’ the capital relation–reproducing spaces of marginality and insecurity. En el contexto de la crisis financiera de 2008 y la forma como ha impactado a los países de todo el mundo, es impresionante cómo pocos académicos han analizado críticamente, porqué y cómo las crisis pasadas han creado oportunidades para estados y capitalistas para explotar a lo que se ha llamado ‘base de la pirámide de consumidores’ en el mundo en desarrollo. Este artículo busca desnaturalizar la extensión del crédito del consumidor al creciente número del sector de trabajadores que comprende el excedente relativo de población en México, situando el análisis dentro de los procesos de neoliberalización más amplios. A partir de un marco materialista histórico, describo una característica clave del estado mexicano neoliberal—a lo que me refiero como estado debtfare—que se ha servido para facilitar la acumulación por medio de estrategias de expropiación. Estas estrategias neoliberales sirven para exponer e integrar espacios de informalidad dentro de diferentes facetas del mercado capitalista, es decir el sistema de crédito, sin incluirlos ‘dentro’ de la relación del capital—reproduciendo espacios de marginalidad e inseguridad. 在2008年金融危机及它如何影响了世界各国的背景下，批判地分析过去的危机为何及如何为国家和资本家们创造了机会以剥削发展中世界所谓的“金字塔底层消费者”，这样的学者是如此之少。通过把分析置于更广泛的新自由化进程之内，本文寻求使消费者信贷扩展到人数不断增多的非正式部门工人这一现象非自然化，这些工人组成为墨西哥的相对剩余人口。利用一种历史唯物主义的架构，我勾画了新自由主义墨西哥国家（我称之为债务国家 ，它已服务于以剥夺战略促进积累）的一个关键特征。这些新自由主义战略服务于揭开各种非正式空间，将其整合进资本主义市场即信贷体系的不同方面，而不把它们纳入资本关系，对边缘和不安全空间进行再生产。 2008년 금융위기와 그것이 세계에 준 충격 맥락에서 놀랍게도 과거 위기가 국가와 자본가들에게 소위 개발 도상국에서 ‘피라밋 하단’으로 불리는 소비자들을 착취할 수 있는 기회를 만든 것을 비판적으로 분석하는 학자는 대단히 적다. 이 글은 신자유주의화 과정을 분석하여 멕시코에서 상대적인 잉여 인구를 구성하고 있는 비공식 부문 노동자들에게 소비자 크레딧을 확대하는 것을 탈자연주의화하고자 한다. 사적 유물론적 틀을 갖고 탈취 전략으로 축적을 촉진시키는데 기여한 - 부채국가(debtfare state)라고 부른 - 신자유주의 멕시코 국가의 핵심적인 내용을 다룬다. 이러한 신자유주의 전략들은 비공식성의 공간을 다양한 자본주의 시장 즉, 자본 관계 내부로 포함시키지 않고, 주변성과 불안의 공간을 재생산하는 크레딧 시스템에 노출시키고 또한 통합하는데 기여한다.

Recasting Neoliberal Dominance in the Global South? a Critique of the Monterrey Consensus

The UN Financing for Development conference (FfD) was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002 to gain international financial and political support for the Millennium Development Goals. Various multilevel consultations were held with “equal stakeholders” ranging from the IMF and WTO to civil society organizations in order to forge a consensus-based framework for substantially reducing world poverty. However, despite the FfDs seemingly novel attempts at inclusionary and multilateral forms of negotiation, this article suggests that the Monterrey consensus is, in the first instance, concerned with reproducing and thus legitimating the growing power of transnational capital. The consensus is not so much about reducing poverty as it is about managing the ever-increasing polarization of capitalist social relations in the South.

The Politics of Representation and Financial Fetishism: the case of the G20 summits

Abstract One year after the 2008 crash, policy makers and international lending institutions declared the crisis over and assured the world that recovery was underway. The efforts of the Group of Twenty (G20) have been widely credited with securing economic recovery. In this article I examine the politics of representation of the crisis by the G20. I argue that the G20 summits have served to naturalise and depoliticise the crisis, thereby legitimating a narrow and very particular response to it. The politics of representation is bound up in what I term ‘financial fetishism’. To demonstrate and explain how and why the G20 summits have engaged in a politics of representation alongside a politics of management, I proceed from an abstract to a concrete level of analysis by, first, revealing the social construction of neoliberal-led growth and the subordination of all social life to the rationality of the market, and, second, comparatively exploring the discourse of the G20 summits of 2009 and their predecessor: the New International Financial Architecture of 1999.

The Marketisation of Social Justice: The Case of the Sudan Divestment Campaign

Over the last decade, socially responsible investing (SRI) has become one of the foremost, and according to some observers, the most effective, strategies for influencing corporate behaviour and policy. The Sudan divestment campaign in the United States (and elsewhere) represents one of the more popular and extreme forms of SRI. Given these characteristics, the Sudan embargo is a useful case study to understand more fully and critically the politics and limitations involved in SRI. Until now, the analyses and debates around SRI have tended to focus on either the complementarity or the contradictory relation between moral concerns and the economic objectives of investment decisions. In doing so, these largely technical and economistic analyses have failed to question the power and contradictions inherent in SRI. I argue that this uncritical embrace of SRI, exemplified in the divestment campaign, has led to the depoliticisation and discipline of struggles; the result of which has been to embed further social and political forms of resistance into market rule, or what I refer to as the processes of marketisation.

The Mexican competition state and the paradoxes of managed neo-liberal development

This article explores the extent to which the ‘competition state’ model has taken hold in Mexico. Applying four main characteristics of Cernys competition state, I consider the policy directives of the Mexican state over the past several decades, from the rise of market-led reforms in the wake of the 1982 balance of payments crisis to the end of Vicente Foxs presidential term in 2006. Two observations can be drawn from this survey. First, aside from a few nuances, the Mexican case broadly corresponds to the competition state model. Second, Mexicos competition state has generated highly uneven outcomes, resulting in increased social strife and, paradoxically, greater government intervention in managing the economy. A central contradiction emerging from Mexicos uptake of the competition state model is the disconnect between the theoretical promises of market-led reform, i.e. general prosperity and economic growth premised on the inherent rationality and ‘justice’ of the market, and the practical realities of neo-liberalism in Mexico, including growing levels of poverty, unsustainable levels of public debt, de-industrialisation and persistent trade imbalances – a trend that seems poised to continue in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Through the lens of the competition state model, the nature of neo-liberalisation processes and contestation over the past several decades is made evident, revealing the ways in which neo-liberal values infuse the policy agendas of all major political parties in Mexico.