Taming Multinational Corporations: How Globalization Debates Came of Age in the 1970s

Spurred by the liberalization of trade and capital controls, multinational corporations proliferated after World War II.  By the mid-1960s, however, Latin American and Asian social movements had forced the question of whether and how to regulate multinational corporations before the United Nations.  My paper explores Americans’ participation in this global debate.  Drawing on sources from social activist groups, business trade organizations, and U.S. foreign policy archives, the paper shows how key concepts and political tactics that have marked recent debates over globalization took root in the 1970s.  The paper begins with the unsuccessful campaign for an enforceable United Nations “code of conduct,” intended to regulate and improve multinationals’ behavior.  This project faltered in part thanks to political structures within the United Nations, especially given opposition from U.S. diplomats and business groups.  It also failed due to the complex cross-cultural challenge of forging universal definitions of “responsible” and “irresponsible” business behavior.  Reform efforts from developing-world leaders found some support in the United States, particularly among the “corporate social responsibility” movement that had emerged in response to African-American civil rights claims.  Nonetheless, U.S. activists’ reception of developing-world proposals was mediated through cultural tropes that privileged issues carrying emotional weight (e.g. infant formula advertising in poor countries) or that paralleled domestic civil rights concerns (e.g. equality in employee hiring).  These cultural filters minimized crucial but more technical developing-world concerns, such as regulations on technology sharing and transfer pricing.  By highlighting connections between language, emotion, and political and economic structures, this study of the global debate over multinational corporations offers a useful opportunity to explore the history of capitalism after the cultural turn.