Kate O'Neill The Environment and International RelationsCHAPTER 8 (DRAFT)CORPORATE POLITICS: BUSINESS INTERESTS AND INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTALPOLITICSPrivate economic actors - firms, corporations, business lobbying groups - are perhaps the most controversial group of non-state actors in IEP. Vilified by environmental activists as ravagers of the global environment, with undue political influence and zero public accountability, corporations - particularly multinational corporations (MNCs) - are frequently viewed as the ultimate bad guys in environmental politics. Business interests, on the other hand, are anxious to promulgate another view: advocating the marriage of economy and environment (with minimal government interference), as a "win-win" situation. By greening industrial practices, and developing tools of private governance and regulation, they argue that we will be able to balance environmental and social goals with economic - to the benefit of all. Until recently, the environmental activities and related political action by the corporate sector had been ignored or underplayed in the IR literature.1 This changed, with the emergence ofstudies of the role of non-state actors in international relations, and the rise of private governanceregimes.2 The vital importance of corporations as agents of global environmental degradation ledto a vibrant activist-scholar literature on their role, a theme rapidly picked up by the IEP literature.This chapter charts the growing engagement of business actors in IEP and global governance, documenting a shift from governance of to governance with and by private sector actors. It investigates why the private sector gets involved in international environmental politics,what sources of influence it brings to bear, and the means through which it seeks to shape political outcomes. In part, this is a story of business interests and political lobbying - in particular at the international level. However, it is also the story of the privatization of global governance and regulation, in which corporate interests have played a key role. This trend has started to attract serious attention from IR theorists. This chapter analyzes new forms of private governance at the global level, and assesses their overall utility. It also assesses some of the "good guy/bad guy" arguments forwarded for or against industry, comparing two hypotheses: regulatory capture (that business interests effectively hijack global political processes) and regulatory cooperation, or partnership (that effective global governance requires participation of business interests, and that these interests act in partnership with others towards broader social goals). To return to the leading questions asked throughout this book, we investigate:- Who are these actors, and what are their motivations and sources of influence?- How are they shaping international governance institutions, power relations, norms?- How do they relate to other actors/agents in the international system?- How do the developments charted in this chapter affect general understandings of international politics?Defining the Private Sector in IEP: Actors and Motivations1 Choucri, 20032 O'Neill et al, 20041Kate O'Neill The Environment and International RelationsPrivate economic actors have always played a crucial role in environmental politics at thedomestic level, roles now being mirrored at the global level. First, industrial production has a significant impact on the global environment at all stages of the production process - from investment decisions, through resource extraction and manufacturing to marketing and waste disposal. To that extent, firms and corporations are seen as actors to be governed, in order to minimize environmental and societal harm, although, as we shall see, globalization has generatedparticular challenges to effective governance of private actors. Second, business interests frequently seek to influence the policy process, whether to reduce the impact of government regulation, or to improve the terms of competition. The influence of the corporate sector on domestic environmental politics is well-documented. More recently, they have sought to participate directly in and influence the process and outcomes of international environmental negotiations: this is charted in the section on governance with the private sector. Third, the growing reach of voluntary and self-governance mechanisms developed at the domestic level is being mirrored in the sphere of transnational politics. Global governance by the private sector is the subject of the third section of this chapter. But, what exactly is the private sector? Not surprisingly, it is made up of a variety of different sorts of actors whose interests, capacities and activities vary substantially. In the course of this chapter, I will discuss a wide range of different actors under the broad umbrella of the private sector: from oil and chemicals multinationals to renewable energy firms, insurance companies, certification firms, illegal loggers, and trade associations, who represent the interests of a collection of firms or particular sectors. Creating an adequate typology of these different actors is no easy task. Here I distinguish briefly between firms and corporations on the one hand, and the actors who represent them, on the other.At one level, firms and corporations manufacture goods and provide services for the global economy. Of particular concern to IEP are multinational corporations (MNCs): "any business corporation in which ownership, management, production and marketing extend over several national jurisdictions".3 However, firms and corporations of all shapes and sizes may have an impact on the state and politics of the global environment, and it is important not to "black box" the corporate sector in IEP. Evidence from numerous studies show that corporate strategies, interests and influence vary from sector to sector and firm to firm, and frequently conflict (think, for instance, of a company specializing in renewable energy development versus a coal-mining company). While manufacturing enterprises are considered to have the most directimpact on the environment (and thus may be most directly targeted by regulation), firms in the service sector are important too. This chapter highlights the role of the insurance industry and certification enterprises in IEP, but other service sectors include the waste disposal and recycling industries,