An examination of the Structural Power of Multinational Institutions in Global Governance

Hi folks,

I am half way through my masters here in Australia in Economic Public Policy and Management, and I had to do a very interesting paper which I achieved a distinction for, so it must make SOME sense anyway. I thought this would be a good forum to post it up on and see what people thought of my opinions on multinational corporations. I didnt know what category to stick it in, but I suppose it falls into the way the world is ordered. The piece is full referenced and if anyone wants to ask me questions on it, feel free.

Over and out

CB
What is Structural Power, And What Does It Mean for Arguments About “Private Authority” In the Global Governance?
By Conor Brennan
19/08/2017

Introduction
When Susan Strange posited her four dimensional view of structural power within the international political economy, had she anticipated the state of global governance as it exists now? She died in October 1998, so it is hard to imagine that she would have envisioned the mayhem in the current global power structure and how many private actors now wield inordinate amounts of power. Would she have anticipated the rise of the multinational company as it stands now? In her day, there were very few multinational corporations as the logistics were insurmountable for most ambitious corporations. In 2017, there has been an exponential quantum leap forward both in the number and the power of these institutions. A post-cold war thaw in financial regulations of states, combined with an enormous evolution in technology, has allowed firms to enter the global sphere so much so that the top five hundred multinational corporations (MNCs) account for ninety percent of global foreign direct investment. (Wall, 2011) Dunning & Lundan define a multinational corporation as “An enterprise that engages in foreign direct investment and/or owns or in some way controls value-added activities in more than one country”. (John H. Dunning, 2008) Fundamentally, an MNC is a company that has partial exposure either in production or sales in more than one country. In the context of this essay question, multinational corporations have successfully evaded the complete authority of national governance by being domiciled in multiple countries, and their private authority has grown so great that they wield sufficient structural power over governments, to be able to force whole countries to acquiesce to their policy demands.

There are now more than one hundred thousand multinational corporations worldwide as of year ended 2015, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (UNCTAD, 2015) They straddle a multitude of economic sectors and many are invested in multiple streams of business. Many of the major MNCs are household names such as Coca-Cola, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, but many others are faceless and relatively anonymous but equally as structurally powerful. In this essay the questions will be asked, are MNCs a positive development for global trade, equality and power or are they negative agents of greed and avarice, answerable to no-one and running roughshod over any indigenous industry that tries to compete with them? In this essay, the levels of structural power that these transnational institutions wield, how it they wield it and what for, will be examined.

What is Structural Power?

Christopher May credits Susan Strange with applying the words “structural power” to the machinations of the international political economy, as she further split out the dimensionality of it through security, production, finance and knowledge. Since her death in the nineties many other scholars have picked up the ball and kept going as it has become more and more relevant. (May, 1996) Culpepper and Reinke’s interpretation and definition of structural power is “Structural power, inheres in the fact that firms are agents of economic activity in capitalist democracies. Because the state relies on firm investment to generate growth, the ability of corporations not to invest can cause damage to the economy and thereby to the politicians governing it. Because a negative policy, or even the anticipation of one, may lead firms to lower their rate of investment, and as a result, governments are predisposed to adopt policies that promote investment”. (Culpepper, 2014) These two scholars have taken Susan Strange’s overall general interpretation and applied it to the paradigm we have in 2017, where we have thousands of multinational corporations with substantial levels of structural power advantage over various states. Culpepper and Reinke’s application of structural power was the lens through which they examined the structural power dynamic between governments and banks in the global financial crisis of 2008. Their argument looked in depth at how much leverage governments could wield over the private authority of the big banks and how easily they could be brought to heel by individual governments.

Here in lies the crux of the argument and the basis for this essay. Who holds the trump cards in any given individual relationship between multinational private actors and sovereign states? Most governments, but not all, have a duty of care and responsibility to their respective citizens, and sometimes that means attempting to stymie the economic strength of some MNCs. But if a Multinational company has a headquarters in the Republic of Ireland, an accountancy arm in the Cayman Islands, manufacturing facilities in Thailand, Myanmar and Togo, how can a country like Great Britain impose themselves upon them through legislation? There are many global institutions with substantial numbers of states included in their membership, but there are none specifically designed to referee the behaviours of non-state international actors, particularly multi-national corporations. As a result, in many cases, MNCs wield huge structural power and private authority in pursuit of their own ends (usually profit).

What are Multinational Corporations and how are they Advantaged over their Domestic Rivals?

As stated in the introduction, multinational corporations are institutions that operate in more than one country. They are the culmination of the progression of natural economics, when barriers to trade between nations are removed. They are rational entities whose purpose is to maximise profit and minimise cost. It was David Ricardo in 1817 that formalised the theory of comparative advantage. It states that in an economic system, for example the global economy, if individual entities possess a comparative advantage in producing a particular product, and if they can produce that good at a lower relative opportunity cost or autarky price, they should do so. (Suranovic, 2015) The standard example that Ricardo used initially, compared the countries of England and Portugal and their ability to produce Cloth and Wine, as per the table below:
Hours of work necessary to produce one unit

Country Cloth Wine
England 100 120
Portugal 90 80

Fundamentally, if each country focuses on what they are better at producing, everybody will achieve a positive result when they trade.
When this is applied to the nature of a multinational company, it allows individual MNCs to out-compete local indigenous firms whose market, resources and production are contained within the borders of a single country. These “national” indigenous firms are out-competed by MNC’s through what is sometimes referred to as the “OLI differences”. OLI stands for Ownership, Location and Internalization. These three sources of advantage are specific to multinational firms when compared to indigenous firms. (Oxford, 2011) The term Ownership is self explanatory. Basically an MNC can become footloose and overcome the cost of operating in a specific country by acquiring the best assets globally. Location is similarly simple to comprehend as a footloose multinational entity can relocate their production to the best sites globally. This could be to take advantage of cheaper labour or raw materials, or the availability in an external country to superior technology or beneficial legislation. Internalization is probably the most complicated of the three advantages, as it refers to the ability to bring external sections of their production in different regions under their own umbrella. Many MNCs rely on different firms and smaller MNCs to manufacture parts to their product and sometimes to increase efficiency or to expand productivity, an MNC can buy out a company to adjust it specifically to their needs.

From the late eighties onward, as the global economy opened up and financial barriers to trade were eroded or disintegrated, MNCs began to gain a foothold and also began to take chances in an attempt to access multiple markets. The fax machine, followed by emails and the internet allowed bigger and bigger multinational corporations to gain in mass, complexity and eventually, structural power. MNCs as at 2010, accounted for thirty percent of global GDP. (The Economist, 2017) When compared to 1980 when only 6% of global GDP was attributable to MNCs, one can easily see the exponential growth in both the share and influence of MNCs in the global economy. When you apply this new found power, influence and share of global GDP to the global setting with 196 countries, countries whom provide public goods for their citizens through taxation, you see an inevitable cul-de-sac approaching. If indigenous industries, which are taxed and provide employment, are being out-competed by their multinational rivals, it can have two fold detrimental effects upon a country's economy. Firstly, if an MNC is doing business in a specific country, but is not domiciled there, it can be hard for Sovereign nations to enforce fair regulation and taxation on them. Secondly, if an MNC is able to reduce the cost of production by the OLI principles as referred to earlier, they will eventually defeat indigenous industry if they are producing the same product. In specific terms of structural power, Culpepper and Reinke have identified that “states are structurally dependant on capital” and as such, depending on the levels of structural power they can bring to bear, can be impotent to protect indigenous industry from rational predatory MNCs. (Culpepper, 2014)
How Do Multinational Corporations Exert Structural Power Upon Sovereign States?

Although MNCs do not sit on global institutions, and as such wield no direct structural power, they do wield significant indirect structural power. To circumvent barriers to the maximisation of profit, depending on their ambivalence or morality, multinational corporations rely on four main tools to leverage indirect structural power over individual countries. The simplest way MNCs can exert power is through lobbying and discursive influencing. It is common procedure all over the world for those in the executive level of MNCs to wine and dine decision makers and policy makers at the highest level of government to achieve some specific ulterior objective. Lobbyists are, to all intents and purposes, paid persuaders whose job it is to convince or otherwise influence those in power. Whether it’s diffusing a possible corporate tax hike or pushing for market opportunities, it still amounts to either a tangible or intangible profit for the MNC. There was a typical example recently in the Australian political sphere, where an MNC called Landridge Group successfully lobbied a minister in the Australian government named Andrew Robb, to firstly argue in favour of free trade between China and Australia, and secondly to award the $506 million dollar contract for the new port being currently constructed in the city of Darwin. Andrew Robb subsequently withdrew from his role as the minister for trade and accepted a position as an economic advisor for a Chinese billionaire with connections to the MNC Landridge Group. (Bloomberg, 2017) By successfully lobbying and incentivising an individual at the decision making level of the Australian government, an MNC (Landridge Group) successfully secured the rights to a massive infrastructural project in a country where they are not domiciled. (Belot, 2017)

The second way MNCs can employ structural power is through state-firm bargaining and “locational tournaments”. As referred to earlier, nations are reliant on foreign direct investment and constantly concern themselves with how to attract it. MNCs are responsible for almost all of this globally and so states usually try to make themselves as attractive as possible to these entities. Occasionally an MNC may have a number of competing nations looking to invite them in to deploy some of their manufacturing base in that specific nation. However, MNCs are giant rational entities and if one nation offers an incentive, perhaps through tax breaks or maybe to an offer to help build a facility, a rival economy may try and offer a superior deal. The MNC will then play one off the other until the most satisfactory deal emerges. In this scenario, individual nations prostitute themselves in order to attract the FDI from MNCs. An example of this type of use of structural power occurred in the Republic of Ireland when Facebook, one of the largest MNCs in the world, chose Ireland to locate their new state –of-the-art data centre. Britain, the Netherlands and Norway were all competing for the custom from Facebook as the construction phase of the project would employ thousands of people and once that was complete, Facebook would then employ between four thousand and five thousand jobs directly. Ireland has always possessed a low corporate tax rate and as a result some of their rival nations offered Facebook some similar tax concessions. Ireland, in conjunction with yet another MNC (Brookfield Construction) (Multiplex, 2017), elected to donate zoned cheap land to Facebook, partially fund the construction of the facility and even divert traffic from the main arterial highway that flows between Belfast and Dublin, all for the benefit of Facebook’s employees. This incredibly generous offer from the Irish Government secured Facebook’s support and the project is almost complete as at August 2017. (IDAIreland, 2016) Several of Ireland’s competitors, particularly the Netherlands, were angry at the decision and blamed Ireland for using underhand tactics but in reality it was Facebook who pitted each nation against each other to secure their custom.

It simply was a rational multinational company twisting the arms of nations to achieve a desirable result.

The third way MNCs can employ structural power is by inventing credible fears of exit from a nation’s shore if conditions become unfavourable. This combination of mild threats and downright bullying can achieve concessions and results for MNCs without them physically having to do anything whatsoever. The best example I can think of is once again from the Culpepper and Reinke article that highlighted the attempts by the British government to force their entire banking sector to accept a bailout deal to fend off the existential threat that was the global financial crisis of 2008. HSBC began as a predominantly British bank and financial services holding company, but over the years it has metastasised into a giant malignant octopus with a tentacle in virtually every developed market on earth. (HSBC, 2017) The British government wanted to bail out the strong and the weak banks alike, so as to spread the risk of financial implosion for the British taxpayer. HSBC made it plain that although they were considerably exposed in the British economy, they would be perfectly prepared to divest themselves of British business and go elsewhere to other global markets where their interests would be paramount. Britain, as would any rational nation, was loath to risk losing this source of MNC based capital and acquiesced to the demands of the bank. HSBC forced the British government to back down and as a result the British taxpayers were exposed to billions of pounds sterling in losses. The mere threat of HSBC jumping ship, forced what was and largely still is, one of the most powerful individual nations on earth to bend the knee. (Culpepper, 2014)

The fourth and final way MNCs can wield indirect structural power is through corruption and cronyism. This is the most sinister and cynical method of achieving goals that a multinational company can employ as it utilizes methods that are not only frowned upon but are downright illegal in most developed countries. There is no real mechanism or overarching governing body to keep these behaviours in check, and as a result, especially in developing resource-rich nations, this type of practise is commonplace. The most sickening example of this in recent memory has to be the behaviours of Chevron, one of the mightiest MNCs on earth, and how they got what they wanted from the Ecuadorian government. To put it simply, a huge tract of rainforest covered land was deemed to have huge reserves of valuable minerals beneath its surface. Chevron approached the executive level of government and asked for permission to begin operations. They were met with a resounding “No!”. Shortly after, they leaned on an Ecuadorian judge named Zambrano and paid him an enormous bribe and that “No” somehow evolved into a “Yes”. It is no mystery how Chevron achieved what they wanted to achieve and if they had tried the same tactics in a major developed country, they would have been punished. They ran roughshod over the rights of the indigenous people who inhabited the affected region and paid even less regard to the laws of the country. Sure, they could have applied the previous three methods of structural power to achieve the rational goals they aspired to but they had so little respect for the Ecuadorian people or its government that they just went straight to the man with the relevant power and jurisdiction and bribed him. (Telesur, 2015)

Dominic Kelly paraphrased Susan Strange when he said “structural power is the ability to shape frameworks of interaction within which actors relate to one another or, in other words, power over the way things are done and the beliefs sustaining the way things are done”. (Kelly, 2002) It is clear to see that the four methods of exerting indirect power certainly meet the criteria of Susan Strange’s vision. And it is also clear that despite the fact that multinational corporations do not wield direct power at the top level of individual states, their ability to use indirect power renders them in some ways more powerful than some states.

Are Multinational Corporations Good, Bad or Ugly?

In the current paradigm of global economics, multinational corporations are a natural by-product. All businesses from the smallest bakery in Perth to the mightiest global mining conglomerate are in the business to win. They will each maximise gain and minimise cost to the best of their ability. For MNCs there are certainly positive effects to be enjoyed globally by their presence. Firstly, they have the ability to be far more efficient than their singularly domiciled rivals. They can employ legislation and taxation laws from their preferred countries of operation, and the money saved doing this can be applied to research and development which enhances global society. Consumers benefit in every country from the fact that items and products can be made and distributed more cheaply than if these MNCs was confined to just one country. They can be looked upon as chaotic agents of redistribution of labour and equalisation of standards of living. If they choose to move their manufacturing bases from developed countries to developing countries to minimise labour costs, they are giving citizens of developing countries opportunities to work and emerge from primitivism in some cases. They introduce technology to areas and open markets that were previously closed. They can innovate and promote technology globally. For supporters of a more cosmopolitan planet, it could be argued that the multinational corporations are in the vanguard of this future possibility. Let’s not forget that they directly or indirectly employ hundreds of millions of people globally.
The flip side of that is that there are major concerns, particularly over legitimacy, sovereignty, corruption and some anti-progressive elements to their methods of doing business globally. Firstly on legitimacy, who are the MNCs answerable to? Who if anyone can curtail their influence or exert dominance upon them in times of existential economic threat and hardship? The answer is no-one. They are only beholden to their shareholders and owners and nobody else. They use any and all means to maximise their gains and will race to the bottom in terms of cost. They are primal forces of economic power with no overarching oversight and as a result, in some cases, are almost omnipotent. In terms of sovereignty, there are questions as to where they pay their dividend to society, i.e. their tax. They exploit all nations yet have a symbiotic relationship simultaneously as they require the custom from individual markets. Their opaque nature means that they are capable of applying clever taxation regimens that limit their exposure to any one nation’s exchequer. It’s unfair to say that MNCs unilaterally pay no tax but it would be ludicrous to suggest that they don’t try and limit their exposure. They certainly have an advantage over indigenous industry in this sphere. The corruption concerns are blazingly obvious. The example above of the Ecuadorian rainforest is as damning an example of the abuse of structural power as you can get, but the bare truth is that this is commonplace globally and can be seen in Africa, South America and Central and Southeast Asia.

My take on anti-progressive concerns surrounding the behaviour of MNCs is that they encourage developing economies to dive for the bottom of the barrel in competition for their custom. It can leave countries lacking diversity in their GDP growth and leaves them greatly exposed to technology advancements and automation, or even the latest country to get its act together and enter the race. An argument can be made that MNCs are vampiric mechanisms designed to extract wealth from developing countries and funnel it into the hands of the privileged and the elite.
The ugly truth is that MNCs are all of the above and none. They are a natural evolutionary response to global economics and are simply filling demand with supply, competitively. If the opportunity to exist was not there, they would be quickly weeded out. I look on them as giant rational institutions driven by the sole purpose of generating income and minimising cost. They have no overarching code of ethics as it changes from country to country as they engage in business and as a result their morality is flexible. The result of this is, as we have demonstrated previously, they employ varying types of indirect structural power to achieve results.

Are Multinational Corporations All Powerful and If So How Can Their Structural Power Be Curtailed?

Undoubtedly, MNCs exert great influence over both individuals in government and governments in totality. Their trans-nationality allows them to be beholden to no one set of rules or state. They hold all the cards, capital, marketing and technology, and deploy them to their best advantage. They can relocate and manifest at will and will continue to do so as long as they can get away with it and aren’t hamstrung by rules. The World Bank issued a stark statistic in 2016, stating that no less than sixty nine of the top one hundred economies on earth are actually multinational corporations. (World-Bank, 2016) Its clear from these statistics that at least economically, many MNCs have considerably more power than many nations. Even militarily, some MNCs have now employed a military to defend their interests and assets; the most notable is the Russian gas giant, Gazprom. (Harding, 2007) A case could be made that these sorts of incremental changes that the largest MNCs are applying would allow them an argument to apply for membership of overarching institutions such as the United Nations. On the other hand there is also a case to be made that the power that MNCs possess is actually an illusion. At the end of the day they are run by individual humans who live in countries around the world and in that regard, they are at least partially under the legislative control of nations. Some people also believe that some of the forms of structural power employed by MNCs are nonsense, particularly locational tournaments and exit threats or bluffs. Another argument can be made that despite the pretence of a global presence, the headquarters of these organisations are really based out of a handful of cities around the world such as Moscow, Tokyo, London, New York and New Delhi.

Many countries are concerned about their vulnerability to the machinations of MNCs, and there are many social movements, anti-globalization and otherwise, that are hugely concerned with the power of MNCs. Some developed countries are currently attempting to reverse the free trade initiatives that began globally in the 1990s. These types of policies, such as trade tariffs, are designed to protect indigenous industry and indigenous jobs from global market forces, despite the inefficiencies inherent mathematically to such policy. It smacks of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Conclusion

Multinational companies are here to stay. Despite their use of structural power that can undercut the sovereignty of individual nations, they are the most efficient way of executing global trade. Their presence has accelerated global technology levels and the standards of living in a plethora of developing countries where they have invested. Yes, they use ruthless methods of power application to achieve their aims, but they employ hundreds of millions of people worldwide. They generate a material percentage of the planets GDP and their influence can now probably never be erased barring that our global society somehow devolves. MNCs have a private authority that supersedes the authority of individual governments, but because every country has different structures and rules designed to referee their own societies, how can an MNC meet everybody’s criteria? Unless an overarching global institution is formed to specifically regulate all MNCs, the current paradigm will persist. The only achievable way of curtailing the power of MNCs is to force tax havens to open their books and bring their legislation in line with the global norm. Ultimately, in the future, as developing countries bring the standards of living of their citizens up to the same level as developed countries, the ability of multinational corporations to reduce cost will somewhat lessen, but that advantage will always remain in some small way no matter what. MNCs are a force for global economic good while simultaneously being potential cesspits of corruption. Either way, they are here to stay.

References
Bibliography
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Culpepper, R. (2014). Structural Power and Bank Bailouts in the United Kingdom and the United States. Politics & Society , 42 (4), 429.
Harding, L. (2007, July 6). www.theguardian.com... Retrieved August 19, 2017, from The Guardian.
HSBC. (2017, August 19). www.hsbc.co.uk... Retrieved August 19, 2017, from WWW.HSBC.CO.UK.
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THANKS chief - sorry my IT is poor

a reply to: Warchief666

Apologies didnt mean to interrupt. Couldnt read. The edit thing will say you have 4 hours to edit, right now, but its actully 2 hours.

I recommend you use Notepad++ to eliminate the line spacing 'bug' when you paste from the text editor into web boxes.

And I add "...CONTINUED..." at the bottom and top as I go till the end (so people wont interupt you like I did).

Thanks for the big contribution.

Good read so far, I hope you will post all of it?
It wouldn't hurt to create paragraphs, kinda hard on the eyes reading block text.

Just finished reading, good examination of the role of multinationals and their mechanisms of power. Well written paper.

I disagree that they are here to stay, they are like all movements a transitional phase.
Why transitional? Due to their sole ethic of profit the damage they will cause both to the environment and society will become intolerable.
Corporate ethics are suicidal and will engulf all of mankind with a few decades.
The greatest mistake was thinking government was created for the people when it should have been created to control commerce. Had we begun with an ethical capitalist framework we might not be in the mess we are since most of these MNCs were creations of the United States and Europe.

Europe has turned to socialism in response which can only devolve in to communism and anarchy.
America stands on the brink of joining Europe or rejecting globalism and with it much of Corporate influence.
What we suffer temporarily in lack from the market will generate new jobs to fill those needs.
It will cost more but as that money circulates and stays within a community it can build it's independence from MNCs

I think what many call the NWO is simply the largest and most powerful corporations and banks, a few hundred to several thousand people who can move us all like chess pieces. Everything that destabilizes families, communities and countries works to the favor of corporations, anything that creates debt from war, to social services, natural disasters, terrorism even - works to benefit MNCs.
They are behind much of the evil going on in the world today.
We cannot survive long only living as resources for corporations.
At some point they will begin to fight each other for control.
World War 3 will be between corporate interests.

My Apologies, the original does have paragraphs, but I copied and pasted from my word document.

a reply to: Warchief666

Yeah i tried every editor that came up last year, same BS every time, so i finally begged the forums and some fine folks told me about Notepad++. Only free/"free" one I know about that doesnt do it, and its features its the only thing real writers should use from day one.

I have thrown a few spaces in between there to break it up to make it more tolerable for those who have the patience to carve through it.

Seems to be a very good thread so far. I do believe that things are controlled world wide by certain individuals.

I do not believe that all of these corporations or their actions are evil though, They are powerful and they do like to collect our money.

Its hard to say if there are masterminds behind it all, but I consider them to be giant rational entities

a reply to: Warchief666

There are.

a reply to: rickymouse

There was a rumor that the real power behind the TPTB has their origins in Ancient Egypt. Nobody knows who they are though.

a reply to: Warchief666

Thomas Sankara, leader of the African nation Burkina Faso, tried to go against the IMF only to be assassinated by the French Secret Service.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

You close with:

"think what many call the NWO is simply the largest and most powerful corporations and banks, a few hundred to several thousand people who can move us all like chess pieces. Everything that destabilizes families, communities and countries works to the favor of corporations, anything that creates debt from war, to social services, natural disasters, terrorism even - works to benefit MNCs.
They are behind much of the evil going on in the world today.
We cannot survive long only living as resources for corporations.
At some point they will begin to fight each other for control.
World War 3 will be between corporate interests."

With those words, I assume you are pointing a finger at the Council on Foreign Relations with its intricately interwoven hierarchy of elites?

Would she have anticipated the rise of the multinational company as it stands now? In her day, there were very few multinational corporations as the logistics were insurmountable for most ambitious corporations.

If she had included a study of Marx and his evaluation of capitalism, she certainly would have have known that at least some people anticipated the rise of international corporations beyond the control of national governments.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: Asktheanimals

With those words, I assume you are pointing a finger at the Council on Foreign Relations with its intricately interwoven hierarchy of elites?

They would be the figureheads along with Bilderberg and a few other high profile groups, the sole public face for those corporate interests. At least that is what I believe.