Workshop on International Law, Natural Resources and Sustainable
Development
The Stakes of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives: Thinking Critically about MSIs as a Tool of
Global Governance in the Extractive Industries
Deval Desai
School of Law, School of African and Oriental Studies, London
Amelia Evans
Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives, Harvard University, Boston
In the last decade, multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have emerged as a valuable tool of
global economic governance, present in sectors as diverse as labour, manufacturing, and
natural resources. They are particularly prominent in the extractive industries, where they
have flourished by successfully incorporating government actors. While the literature on
MSIs has highlighted this proliferation, we identify from practice an emerging trend of
professionalization: MSIs are developing clear, standardizable and transplantable
bureaucratic structures, making them amenable to replication and further accelerating their
growth. We also note that MSIs are not yet subject to clear regulation, understood in the
loosest sense to mean serious endeavours to define the boundaries of their possibilities as
tools. There is no clear machinery for the circulation of lessons and practices in their “field”,
nor is there an understanding of whether MSIs are effective at addressing their underlying
aims. In this sense, the accoutrements of a profession are accruing to MSIs as products, but
not as tools of governance.
We argue that this combination of proliferation, professionalization and the absence of
regulation is having a profound impact on the current configuration of MSIs. Their current
horizons are broad and undefined, leading to a significant amount of diffuse generative
energy without evidence that these efforts translate to improved governance. Some MSIs
are expanding their scope to include new industries; others are co-operating, merging and
consolidating; and yet others are turning to for-profit structures. We explore how these
trends might impact the emergence of norms, participation, and the policy relationship
between the global, national and local.