16 May 2024. Beehive Seminar: Corporations as Agents of Interference in Sovereign Affairs: from United Fruit to Cambridge Analytica. Frédéric Mégret (Recording Available)

16 May 2024. 2 - 3 pm
Room 1002 (access via Level 9 stairs)
Melbourne Law School

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Beehive Seminar. Corporations as Agents of Interference in Sovereign Affairs: from United Fruit to Cambridge Analytica.

Frédéric Mégret

The rise of the Wagner group as a ‘state within the state’ notably in the Central African Republic has triggered fears in the West that private military companies might profoundly interfere with the State. Similar concerns had arisen following revelations about the role of Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US elections. Admittedly, though, the history of corporations interfering with domestic affairs is part of a much older tradition of corporation-mediated imperialism. The question is sometimes eluded by claiming that, just like non-state actors cannot commit aggression because only a state can, corporations cannot violate the principle of non-intervention because only sovereigns can. Against that background, I want to explore what it might mean to think of interference in sovereign affairs as mediated by corporations by looking at historical precedents, notably United Fruit in Central America, Gecamines in the Congo and the International Telecommunications Union in Chile. The argument will foreground some ways in which international law has been used to deproblematize the role of corporations as agents of destabilization and how, in turn, international corporations capturing domestic and foreign policy agendas can help problematize international law.

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Global Corporations & International Law · Frédéric Mégret: Corporations as Agents of Interference in Sovereign Affairs