This essay poses the question of whether grassroots organizations can provide
an alternative center of authority to the state in inducing multinational
corporations to incorporate human rights criteria in their investment and trade
decisions. In examining the anti-apartheid movement and attempts to replicate it
in the 1990s in the campaigns against corporate involvement in Burma and
Nigeria, it presents a mixed picture.
In each case, citizen pressures
increased the costs and risks of "business as usual" with target states and
induced corporations either to undertake social obligations or to disengage
beyond what was required by national regulations or market forces. At the same
time, nonstate actors are limited by the fact that they can induce but, unlike
the state, cannot command corporate behavior; their success is dependent upon
state policies; and their most powerful weapon—municipal procurement power—has
been predominantly a U.S. phenomenon.
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