Rising Powers, Rising Networks: Brazilian Actors in Private Governance

Abstract

This article analyses Brazilian involvement in private labour and environmental governance. It does so by mapping the local actors participating in three recent international initiatives—the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the ISO 26000 Working Group—and exploring the activities of a central group around the Ethos Institute for Business and Social Responsibility. The article argues that the privileged position of this group of actors is supported by the lasting association between a sector of Brazilian business and influential political players, in particular the ruling Workers' Party. On this basis, the article discusses the model of institutional complementarity, suggesting that both the local network and the global initiatives benefited from the narrow state–society relations pervading Brazilian politics. The article contests the claim that emerging economies are necessarily disadvantaged newcomers to private governance, and calls for greater attention to the interface between international initiatives and local political institutions.

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Khalid Nadvi for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article, and to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful recommendations.

Notes

¹ A variety of statistics were drawn and constructed from publicly available material, reports and databases. The archives for the whole ISO 26000 WG are publicly available on http://www.iso.org/wgsr, accessed 21 November 2012.

² Büthe & Mattli (2011, p. 49) consider that two institutions are complementary when their combination yields greater benefits than those they could attain acting separately. Thus, a domestic system of standard-setting is complementary with a certain international body when access to that system confers a “strategic advantage by amplifying their voices in the international standardization process”. The authors provide examples such as the American system of accounting standards with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the European system of technical norms with ISO/IEC.

³ In this article, neo-corporatism is understood to mean a system of interest representation in which different groups—traditionally labour and business but potentially extending to civil society—cooperate at a central level with each other and with the state to reap gains for their members (Crouch, 2006).

⁴ Most consultancies are linked to the GRI: an expected result given that it is the only one of the three initiatives that can be privately certified.

⁵ By 2001 IBASE was co-organising workshops with SAI and the Federation of Industries of Rio de Janeiro on the certification of working conditions, workers' rights and the use of the SA 8000 in Brazil (Capellin & Giuliani, 2004).

⁶ In 2008, IBASE discontinued its social reporting programme because it considered that other organisations were better equipped to continue the project (Torres & Mansur, 2008).

⁷ Suzano Paper is also the first Brazilian firm to have achieved ISO 14001 certification and the first cellulose manufacturer in the world to have certified SA8000 (Suzano Paper, personal communication, 23 September 2011).

⁸ He did so as head of the Articulation Group of Brazilian NGOs (GAO ISO 26000), a network created in 2006 to put forward a unified Brazilian civil society position in the ISO WG (GAO, 2007).

⁹ The local GRI office is currently hosted by the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance (IBGC).

¹⁰ Leal is also one of the richest men in the world (Forbes, 2010).

¹¹ In 2013, seven Brazilian organisations, of a total of 84 worldwide, signed up as testers for the GRI G4 standards, liaising with GRI governance bodies. These are Petrobras, Natura and Vale, three energy companies; Itaipú Binational, AES Tiete and CEMIG, and the IBGC (GRI, 2013c).

¹² Grajew was the owner of the toy manufacturing company Grow Jogos and President of the Brazilian Chamber of Toy Manufacturers ABRINQ. Since 2010, the ABRINQ Foundation has been the local representative of Save the Children International (ABRINQ, 2012).

¹³ Kapaz also had close relationships with a new association of big business leaders—most PNBE members belonged to small and medium companies—called IEDI (Institute for Studies of Industrial Development), created in 1990. In 1992, IEDI supported his candidacy for the presidency of FIESP, which he failed to obtain (Kingstone, 1999, p. 144).

¹⁴ The pragmatism of Lula's presidency and the moderation of the PT have been the subject of extensive academic analysis, while raising significant critiques from local intellectuals—including some of the party's founding members, such as Chico de Oliveira (Bianchi & Braga, 2005; De Oliveira, 2006; Hunter, 2007; Ribeiro, 2008).

¹⁵ Kröger (2012, p. 892) states that approximately 5000 families control 40% of Brazilian GDP.

¹⁶ The last three heads of the National Congress of Industry (CNI) were members of Parliament, two of them during Lula's presidency and one during Cardoso's (Mancuso, 2004, p. 141).

¹⁷ Petrobras abandoned Ethos in 2008 due to a dispute about the content of sulphur in its diesel fuel (Grajew, 2008). However, there is evidence to support the idea that this dispute was related with a proxy struggle among factions of the PT linked with Ethos and Petrobras' leadership (Peña & Davies, 2014).

¹⁸ Moreover, Peña & Davies (2014) highlight that Grajew's links with relevant PT officials, first at the state level and then nationally, were fundamental for the success of the first two forums.

This article was origally published with errors to the pagation. This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum http//dx.doi.org/10.1080/13600818.2014.924314.