Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T11:01:58.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What do codes of conduct do? Hybrid constitutionalization and militarization in military markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

ANNA LEANDER
ANNA LEANDER*
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelænshaven 18A, DK-2000 Frederiksberg
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate over the whether or not the mainstreaming of Corporate Social Responsibility/Codes of Conduct should be welcomed. It suggests that to grapple with this question requires an engagement with the multiple and necessarily situated performativities (or jursigenerativities) of these codes. The article illustrates the argument through an analysis of two jurisgenerative processes (linked to regulation and to politics) triggered by Codes of Conduct in commercial military markets. It shows that the codes are creating both a hybrid regulatory (or constitutional) network that makes it possible to hold firms accountable and a militarization of politics. It does so by showing that the codes create first-, second- and third-order rules but also processes of misrecognition through distraction, distinction and diffusion that empower military professionals. It draws on a study of three cases involving ArmorGroup, a forerunner and advocate of regulation in military markets. This argument makes sense of the disagreements surrounding the virtues of global constitutionalism by highlighting the tensions that become apparent once it is acknowledged that Codes of Conduct are not only performative but are so in multiple ways. It can provide no easy way to dissolve the specific dilemma this multiple jurisgenerativity poses in the context of military markets specifically. But logically flowing from the argument is a suggestion that encouraging and empowering a broader, non-military/security professional involvement in the debate over the regulation of commercial military markets would be the appropriate way of handling it.

Keywords

performativitycommercial military and security companiesCodes of Conductmilitarizationconstitutionalization
Type
Research Article
Information
Global Constitutionalism , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 91 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, Spencer. 2009. “State Department Says It Never Got ArmorGroup.” Washington Independent, 11 September.Google Scholar
ArmorGroup. 2007. “ArmorGroup International Response to Misleading War on Want Report.” PressRelease.Google Scholar
ArmorGroup. 2008. “ArmorGroup becomes full member of the BAPSC.” PressRelease.Google Scholar
Arnold, Martin. 2008. “Where others feared to tread.” Financial Times, 27 May.Google Scholar
Associated Press. 2011. “State Department fires EOD Technology as embassy security.” Press Release, 18 March.Google Scholar
Backer, Larry Catá. 2008. “Multinational Corporations as Objects and Sources of Transnational Regulation.” ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law (ILSAC, International Legal Services Advisory Committee) 14:4.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. 2009. “Human Rights Across Borders: International Human Rights and Democratic Sovereignty.” American Political Science Review 103(4):691–705.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. “Authorized Lanaguage.” In Language and Symbolic Power, edited by Bourdieu., PierreOxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2000. Propos sur le Champ Politique avec une Introduction de Philippe Fritsch. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.Google Scholar
Brown, Dana L., Roemer-Mahler, Anne, and Vetterlein, Antje. 2010. “Theorising Transnational Corporations as Social Actors: An Analysis of Corporate Motivations.” Business and Politics. 12(1):1–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buhmann, Karin, Roseberry, Lynn, and Morsing, Mette. 2010. Corporate Social and Human Rights Responsibilities: Global, Legal and Management Perspectives. Houndsmill: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Callon, Michel, Lascoumes, Pierre, and Barthe, Yannick. 2009. Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cole, August. 2009. “U.S. Seeks New Guards in Kabul.” The Wall Street Journal, 9 December.Google Scholar
CWC. Commission on Wartime Contracting. 2009. “Hearing on Wartime Contracting in Afghanistan and Iraq, 7662–1.” Congress. 14 December.Google Scholar
Danish Government. 2008. Action Plan for Corporate Social Responsibility, athttp://www.csrgov.dk/sw49167.asp.Google Scholar
DCAF. The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces programme on the Privatization of Security 2009, at http://www.privatesecurityregulation.net/introduction.Google Scholar
DCAF. 2010. “International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers.” Available athttp://www.icoc-psp.org/.Google Scholar
de Wolf, Antenor Hallo. 2006. “Modern Condottieri in Iraq: Privatizing War from the Perspective of International and Human Rights Law.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13(2):319–56.Google Scholar
Dickinson, Laura A. 2011. Outsourcing War and Peace: How Privatizing Foreign Affairs Threatens Core Public Values and What We Can Do About It. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Doane, Deborah. 2005. “The Myth of CSR: The Problem With Assuming That Companies Can Do Well While Also Doing Good Is That Markets Really Don’t Work That Way.” Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall: 1–9.Google Scholar
Dobner, Petra, and Loughlin, Martin. 2010. The Twilight of Constitutionalism? Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreazen, Yochi J. 2009. “Senate Probe Exposes Embassy Security Failures.” The Wall Street Journal, 11 June.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich Brooks, Rosa. 2005. “Failed States or the State as Failure?” University of Chicago Law Review 71(4):1159–96.Google Scholar
Flohr, Anne-Grethe, Rieth, Lothar, Schwindenhammer, Sandra, and Dieter Wolf, Klaus. 2010. “Variations in Corporate Norm Enterpreneurship: Why the Home State Matters.” In Business and Global Governance, edited by Ougaard, Morten and Leander, Anna, 235–56. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
GAO. 2009. Defense Contraction Integrity: Opportunities Exist to Improve DOD’s Oversight of Contractor Ethics. Washington: Government Accountability Office.Google Scholar
Gill, Stephen. 1998. “New Constitutionalism, Democratization and Global Political Economy.” Global Change, Peace and Security 10(1):23–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gond, Jean-Pascal, Kang, Nahee, and Moon, Jeremy. 2011. “The Government of Self-Regulation: On the Comparative Dynamics of Corporate Social Responsibility.” Economy and Society 40(4):640–71.Google Scholar
Guzzini, Stefano. 1997. “Maintenir les dilemmes de la modernité en suspens: analyse et éthique poststructuralistes en Relations Internationales.” In L’éthique de l’espace politique mondiale: métissages interdisciplinaires, edited by Giesen, Klaus-Gerd. Bruxelles: Bruylant.Google Scholar
Guzzini, Stefano, and Jung, Dietrich. 2004. Copenhagen Peace Research: Conceptual Innovations and Contemporary Security Analysis. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, Herbert L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haufler, Virginia. 2001. A Public Role for the Private Sector. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Google Scholar
Herberg, Martin. 2006. “Private Authority, Global Governance, and the Law: The Case of Environmental Self-Regulation in Multinational Enterprises.” In Multilevel Governance of Global Environmental Change. Perspectives from Science, Sociology and the Law, edited by Winter, Gerd, 149–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyvaert, Veerle. 2009. “Levelling Down, Levelling Up and Governing Across: Three Responses to Hybridization in International Law.” European Journal of International Law 20(3):647–74.Google Scholar
Hodge, Nathan. 2007. “Private Security Firms Weigh Impact of US Law Change.” Jane’s Defence Weekly.Google Scholar
Hodge, Nathan. 2010. “U.S. Contracotrs Employ Militants.” The Wall Street Journal, 8 October.Google Scholar
HR, House of Representatives. 2009. Department of State and Security Contractor Misconduct. In Commission on Wartime Contracting.Google Scholar
HRF, Human Rights First. 2008a. “News Conference on the Justice Department and Private Security Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The National Press Club, 16 January.Google Scholar
HRF, Human Rights First. Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity. Human Rights First 2008b. Available fromwww.humanrightsfirst.org.Google Scholar
ICRC, International Committee of the Red Cross. 2008. Montreux Document on Pertinent International Legal Obligations and Good Practices for States related to Operations of Private Military and Security Companies during Armed Conflict. Athttp://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/montreux-document-170908.Google Scholar
IPS 2011. “Special Issue: Bourdieu and the International.” International Political Sociology 5(3).Google Scholar
Johns, Fleur. 1995. “Portrait of the Artist as a White Man: The International Law of Human Rights and Aboriginal Culture.” Australian Yearbook of International Law 16:175–97.Google Scholar
Kaldor, Mary. 2003. Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Klabbers, J., Peters, Anne, and Ulfstein, G.. 2009. The Constitutionalization of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Knudsen, Jette Steen. 2011. “Company Delistings from the UN Global Compact: Limited Business Demand or Domestic Governance Failure?” Journal of Business Ethics 103(3):331–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kocher, Eva. 2008. “Codes of Conduct and Framework Agreements on Social Minimal Standards-Private Regulation?” In Responsible Business: Self-Governance and Law in Transnational Economic Transactions, edited by Dilling, Olaf, Herberg, Martin and Winter, Gerd, 67–85. Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishers.Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti. 2004. “By Their Acts You Shall Know Them… (And Not by Their Legal Theories).” European Journal of International Law 15(4):839–51.Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti. 2007. “Constitutionalism as a Mindset: Reflections on Kantian Themes about International Law and Globalization.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 8:9–36.Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti. 2009. “Miserable Comforters: International Relations as New Natural Law.” European Journal of International Relations 15(3):395–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 2004. “Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failed States.” International Security 29(2):85–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lardner, Richard. 2009. “Ex managers: Security firm cut corners at embassy.” Associated Press Online, 11 September.Google Scholar
Leander, Anna. 2006. Eroding State Authority? Private Military Companies and the Legitimate Use of Force. Rome: Centro Militare di Studi Strategici.Google Scholar
Leander, Anna. 2011. “‘Risk and the Fabrication of Apolitical, Unaccountable Military Markets: The Case of the CIA ‘Killing Program’.” Review of International Studies 37(5):1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirowski, Philip, and Nik-Khah, Edward. 2007. “Markets Made Flesh: Performativity, and a Problem in Sciences Studies, Augmented with Consideration of the FCC Auctions.” In Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, edited by MacKenzie, Donald, Muneisa, Fabian and Siu, Lucia, 163–89. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Sean D. 2005. “Taking Multinational Corporate Codes to the Next Level.”Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 43:389–433.Google Scholar
Norton-Taylor, Richard 2008. “Miliband urged to regulate private military.” The Guardian, 18 February.Google Scholar
O’Keefe, , Ed. 2009. “Security Firm Is Pressed On U.S. Embassy Contract.” The Washington Post, 11 June.Google Scholar
Percy, Sarah. 2007. “Mercenaries: Strong Norm, Weak Law.”International Organization 61(2):367–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, Anne. 2006. “Compensatory Constitutionalism; The Function and Potential of Fundamental International Norms and Structures.” Leiden Journal of International Law 19(3):579–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picciotto, Sol. 2011. Regulating Global Corporate Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PMCS List. 2006. Another oups video: ArmorGroup.Google Scholar
Ponte, Stefano, and Richey, Lisa. 2011. Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Risen, James. 2010. “Afghans linked to the Taliban guard US Bases.” The New York Times, 8 October.Google Scholar
Ruggie, John G. 2008. “Taking Embedded Liberalism Global: The Corporate Connection.” In Embedding Global Markets: An Enduring Challenge, edited by Ruggie., John G.Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
SASC, Senate Committee on Armed Services. 2010. Inquiry Into the Role and Oversight of Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan together with Additional Views. US Senate.Google Scholar
Schakowsky, Jan. 2011. “Conyers, Schakowsky, Moran, and Hinchey Call for End of Use of Troubled Private Security Contractors at U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.” House Conveyers; PressReleases, 24 February.Google Scholar
Schor, Elana. 2008. “ArmorGroup sued over embassy.” The Guardian, 28 April.Google Scholar
Schulman, Daniel. 2009a. “ArmorGroup Loses Kabul Embassy Contract.” MotherJones, 9 December.Google Scholar
Schulman, Daniel. 2009b. “ArmorGroup Whistleblower Forced to Resign.” MotherJones, 3 September.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Birgitta, and Tilling, Karina. 2009. “‘ISO-lating’ Corporate Social Responsibility in the Organizational Context: A Dissenting Interpretation of ISO 26000.” Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management 16(5):289–99.Google Scholar
Sheridan, Beth. 2009. “State Department’s Oversight Of Security Contractors Is Scrutinized.” Washington Post, 13 September.Google Scholar
Siegel, Robert, and Block, Melissa. 2008. “Ex-Marines Suing U.S. Security Contractor.” National Public Radio (NPR).Google Scholar
Slaughter, Anne-Marie. 2004. A New World Order, edited by Quintana., MichaelPrinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
St. Jean, Marie Anne. 2009. “Interview with ArmorGroup Whistleblower John Gorman”, athttp://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2174291/interview_with_armorgroup_whistleblower.html?singlepage=true.Google Scholar
Teubner, Gunther. 2002. “Hybrid Laws: Constitutionalizing Private Governance Networks.” In Legality and Community, edited by Kagan, Robert and Winston, Kenneth, 311–31. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Public Policy Press.Google Scholar
Teubner, Gunther. 2004. “Societal Constitutionalism: Alternatives to State-Centred Constitutional Theory.” In Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance, edited by Joergs, Christian, Sand, Inger-Johanne and Teubner, Gunther, 31–50. Oxford: Hart.Google Scholar
Teubner, Gunther. 2008. “The Corporate Codes of Multinationals: Company Constitutions Beyond Corporate Governance and Co-Determination.” In Conflict of Laws and Laws of Conflict in Europe and Beyond: Patterns of Supranational and Transnational Juridification, edited by Nickel, Reinhardt. Hart: Oxford.Google Scholar
Teubner, Gunther. 2011a. “Debate and Dialogue: Constitutionalizing Polycontexturality.” Social & Legal Studies 20(2):209–52.Google Scholar
Teubner, Gunther. 2011b. “Self-Constitutionalizing TNCs? On the Linkage of ‘Private’ and ‘Public’ Corporate Codes of Conduct.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 18(2):617–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Chris. 2009. “2 Say They Reported Abuses at Embassy.” The New York Times, 11 September.Google Scholar
Thomson, Janice. 1994. Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Townsend, Mark. 2011. “Afghan private security bill soars.” The Observer, 6 March.Google Scholar
Tyson, Anna Scott. 2009. “Report Details Misbehavior by Kabul Embassy Guards; Contractors Called ‘Lewd and Deviant’.” The Washington Post, 9 September.Google Scholar
UN. 1989. “International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries.” UN General Assembly.Google Scholar
Van Mulligen, Johannes. 2011. “Global Constitutionalism and the Objective Purport of the International Legal Order.” Leiden Journal of International Law 24(2):277–304.Google Scholar
Varner, Bill. 2010. “U.S., U.K., Security Group Question UN Regulations.” Businessweek, 17 June.Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2005. Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics. The Mystery of Ministry. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
War on Want. 2006 Corporate Mercenaries: The threat of private military and security companies athttp://www.waronwant.org/attachments/Corporate%20Mercenaries.pdf.Google Scholar
War on Want. 2009. “Licence to kill for private armies.”www.waronwant.org.Google Scholar
White, Andrew. 2006. “Private Security Companies Call for Universal Rules of Engagement.” Jane’s Defense Weekly, 9 August.Google Scholar
Young Pelton, Robert. 2006. Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror. New York, NY: Crown Publishers.Google Scholar