"Key Partners: International Business Associations and the Regulation of Multinational Corporations"

Proof of the growing interest triggered by international business associations (IBAs), an expanding number of scholars now look at their impact of global governance (Ballor & Pitteloud, 2023). Studies have covered many topics, from the role of business associations in the construction of the European Economic Community, focusing for example on their reaction to the Vredeling initiative on workers consultation (Petrini, 2011) or on the role of the automobile industry (Milor, 2021; Ramirez Perez 2008), to the tactics of Swiss employers faced with the drafting of various corporate guidelines targeting MNCs (Pitteloud, 2019). Scholars stress the importance of studying IBAs in their various evolving contexts, in relation with different actors, such as states, international organizations (IOs), and individual firms (Rollings 2021, Pitteloud & al 2022).
Building on this growing scholarship, I focus on the context of attempts by international organizations at regulating multinational corporations (MNCs) from the 1960s to the 1990s. At the United Nations and in other IOs, MNCs were faced with the threat of regulation encompassing aspects as diverse as employment and working conditions, environmental issues, or bribery. To look at the four IBAs (International Chamber of Commerce, International Organization of Employers, Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD and Union des industries de la Communauté Européenne) that lead the efforts to counter these regulation attempts highlights their cooperation and occasional tensions. But it also shows how both IOs and MNCs relied on these associations and therefore sheds a light on the crucial role they played in these international processes.
Based on several archives of IBAs and national committees in Europe and the US as well as on archives of IOs, this paper explores first how, during the heights of regulation attempts in international arenas, international business associations were fundamental interlocutors for both IOs and MNCs and second, to what extent they contributed to the failure of regulation attempts.