Chapter 7 - Non State Actors: NGOs and MNCs

"Can one person make a difference in the world?" That's a heavy question to start a chapter.

Plato, when he was 18 wrote "The Republic" in which he argued you had an obligation as a citizen to work for justice. When he was older (35) he wrote a book called "The Laws" in which he argued, essentially, the justice in society is not really his concern.

This sentiment is echoed by Tom Petty who sang: "My life, your world."

Jackson Browne took a different look at the questions and sang: "They say it can't be won/ the way the game is run/ but if you choose to stay/ you wind up playing anyway."

I think individuals matter. I'm not sure Gore would have invaded Iraq, at least not in the manner the Bush administration did.

But of course the bigger more important question for each of us: How much do I (or you, or we) actually matter... I have no answers for you on that one. In fact I think it is a strange thing to launch a chapter in our text about Non-Government Organizations and Multinational corporations.

But I guess the authors' point is that all theses groups are made of individuals. Although maybe no one can act on the international area alone (not even Bill Gates or Warren Buffet) we all can matter. We as organized groups and we as stock holders in multinational corporations all matter and should matter.

First don't fall prey to the fallacy that NGOs and MNCs are in any way the same kinds of organizations. They are not. it is not a "level playing field." in any way.

Non-Governmental organizations almost always have an agenda that is focused and clear even if it is not popular. They usually operate on donations and funds from other domestic and international non-state actors. Although we could find place where the important NGO are some how working against each other, it is a difficult argument to make. Not that these groups (from folks who want to save whales to those who want to eliminate land mines to those who want clean water...) are altruistic. They don't need to be. They may even be motivated by the need for fame or attention, but they are not motivated by the one thing that all Multi national coporations are motivated by - greed - profit.

As are we all, those of us who live in this world. Even non-profits have to have some kind of income flow or they can't keep their payroll paid and their doors open.

Multi-Nationals Out number NGOs by a factor of "a lot"!

That's an expression I developed in the mid nineties. See when I was first studying political science in the late seventies/early eighties - the ratio was ten to one.

By the nineties, some estimates were 25 - 1 ratio of MNCs to NGOs. Frankly, its easier to start an MNC than an NGO. So they proliferate, go out of business, reconstitute, refinance, multiply and divide...

MNC out gun NGOs

MNCs simply have more money to spend on research and development, marketing and of course corruption than any NGO could hope to have. Again, it may have occurred but it is difficult to imagine a place where the NGO on the ground has more resources, more personnel, more equipment, more "experts" more security...It's just not a fair comparison at all.

On p 204 & 205 the authors lay out the politicAl and economic factors that allow NGOs to exist or thrive or not. But one of the biggest reasons NGOs even exist is because states fail to act. Many times, national leaders see advantage to doing nothing (Clinton in Rwanda) rather than risking and losing. Especially in poorer developed councilors where the needs are acute, the realities are often that the domestic government simply can not act on its own or dare not act on its own.

The need to "buy security" on the ground, often the hiring of local thugs and gangs, is one of the common realities that both NGOs and MNCs share in many parts of the developing world.

I like the map on page 212 - the world of co ka-cola. It brings to light a reality of globalization. Is Coke a better brand name than any nation has, or Nike? I used to wear a T-shirt to class one day - from the NFL Europe and tell the story of a T-shirt : The cotton is probably not grow in the first world and the material is probably not manufactured in the first world, it may be assembled of finished in the USA (and thus can be sold as made in the USA) but here's wear it gets weird.

The t-shirt is bought, worn for less than a year, given to a charity for free. The charity sells only a small fraction (from 1 - 2%) of all t-shirts donated to them back to the public. Most are sold in bulk to either be recycled into something else like paper or low grade cotton (about 20-25%) the rest is shipped as rags, or the lucky t-shirts (about 1/3 of them) get shipped back to somewhere in the developing world (Africa being the most likely stop.) Most are re-sold to the locals by local venders - not given away, because profit, even a tiny one, drives the entire endevour...

Notice the chart on the next page. Of the top five entities that are not states, notice all are oil companies - oh and WalMart! WalMart could buy and sell most countries in the world and yet they left Germany because they just couldn't live with German labor laws and the only have one store in Canada for those same reasons (my Union -AFT 1521 - College Faculty Guild) boycotts WalMart - but I don't want to get on my soap box (as my dad used to say).

That is strange, isn't it? A store is worth more than any of the large world wide food producers? Larger than all private banks (notice Citigroup is in 50th place, tops for banks world wide).

Notice how many car companies are above Citigroup. This is from 2006 data so I wonder if it exactly the same today, but still they are really big companies those "detroit boys" who still can't seem to make a gas efficient car that is correctly sized, powered and fueled. People call US car companies dinosaurs and that seems appropriate.

Finally, your text ends with a mention of the treaty of Westphalia as the beginning of this current era of nation states and "sovereignty" as the central concept that allows nation states to exist and matter.

If NGOs, MNCs and "world government" bodies like the UN and the World Court all work together they could take over they world!!! Have you heard that argument, yet. Again, i really don't think the idea of 'taking over the world" is realistic but more importantly, MNCs, especially, do not work well together.

MNCs are often in competition and these completions, played out in some of the poorest least developed countries in the world leave ecological and human scars that are not healed over night and that are never healed. MNC extract wealth - whether mineralogical, agricultural, or human, and leave - often much less then they took.

So who should be the agent of development,if not corporations, who? States?, NGOs? inter national (intergovernmental) organizations? I hate to sound like a conservative but even in this dysfunctional world of ours we continue to reduce poverty, starvation, infant mortality, and a long list of other measures that are all good news.

The Ethiopian cup, on page 221- tells a similar story to my t-shirt story above. And of course the connection between coffee and slavery is as old as the trans-Atlantic slave trade itself. Slavery still accounts for some percentage of all coffee harvested in the world (the percentages thrown around vary from 10% to 35%).

The same can be said for how and where the main ingredient of what we call chocolate is grown and by who. Slavery still exists and is practiced around the globe day and night. Not all international slavery is for the sex industry but of course that is the largest part. Child slavery is still al multi-million dollar business globally, approaching a billion dollar business.

But "Westphalia" always reminds me of the musical Candid - where they say a rhythm or sing a song about how this is the best of all possible worlds because this is the only possible world so it must be the best of all possible worlds...

If this means nothing to you, that's okay, just put it off as old man ramblings. It is indeed a strange time we live in. Probably in the midst of the deepest longest economic slow down since that big deep economic slow down in the thirties.

And of course, technology, at a minimum, has exacerbated the pace of business and, it seems, the world

As the dieing Wicked Witch said in The Wizard of Oz: "What a world, what a world..."

 

 

 

 

 

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