Business, NGOs and Non-State Actors

1. Business, NGOs and Non-State Actors PI4553

2. Outline • Non-state Actors • Expanding Role • Business Actors • NGOs and Theories of Influence • Spiral Theory • ‘Market Theory’

3. Expanding Role of Non-State Actors • Types of non-state actors • Importance for human rights • Increase in non-state actors • Implications for traditional IR theory?

4. Private Security Firms • PSFs expanding role • 20,000 private contractors in Iraq • Human Rights violations and accountability

5. Business and Human Rights • Corporations – Power and Responsibility • Human rights standards: • OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises • UN Global Compact • 10 principles • Voluntary – CEO letter/reporting • What sorts of firms? • Symbolic Politics? • http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~pol209/globalcompact_web.pdf • UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights – appointed by Sec Gen (John Ruggie)

6. Corporate Accountability • Compensation by corporations for past abuses • Forced labour/Nazi Regime – claims against Swiss Banks and German Industries in US courts • US Alien Tort Claims Act (1789) • ‘any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations’ • Claims against oil companies, claims against private contractors responsible for Abu Ghraib • Most claims where corporation ‘aided and abetted a state in governmental violations’ Clapham p. 254

7. NGOs • Influence of NGOs and the Paradox of Empty Promises • Spiral Theory, Risse, Ropp and Sikkink • Stages and mechanisms • Boomerang pattern

8. How NGOs work • Market for transnational support • Too much suffering, too little compassion • Selection – NGO’s looking for “high value” causes • Theoretical argument • And IR and Spiral theory? • Depiction of NGOs

9. Challenges to HR NGOs • Bias? (see Ron etal) • Special focus on powerful and high visibility countries (US abuses) in addition to general suffering. • Mission blurring? Shift away from prisoners of conscience • Membership challenges • Logic of collective action

10. Revision • Do non-state actors influence human rights? • In which of Steven Lukes’ lands would one be most likely to encounter an argument for the government employing a torturer to advance the community’s interest? Could it be a democracy? • What are the principal shortcomings of Truth Commissions? • How might you argue that the “agent” makes an important contribution to the level of human rights violations?

11. A rough guide to concepts and topics • 20th Century Genocides and Response • Banality of Evil • United States ‘exceptionalism’ and human rights • 1st generation rights • International Criminal Court • Shortcomings of Truth Commissions • Principals and agents • Machiavelli and the Inquisitor -- Leaders’ motivations for violations • Agents motivations for violations. • Spiral Theory/NGOs

12. Toleration Consociationalism Policies /regimes implied by toleration Limits of toleration Human rights/animal rights United Nations institutions and human rights International Bill of Human Rights Reservation Social contract theorists Utilitarianism State of Nature Revisionism Nanking and incentives to violate Command responsibility Positive and Negative rights Standard model Goldhagen argument Psychological approaches Non-state actors Global Compact Challenges to human rights – sovereignty, culture, continued