This thesis explores the lobbying strategies used by multinational agribusinesses to shape the global food security regime as part of global capitalism management. My case study focuses on how the...Show moreThis thesis explores the lobbying strategies used by multinational agribusinesses to shape the global food security regime as part of global capitalism management. My case study focuses on how the four largest grain traders in the world lobby the Food and Agriculture Organization to promote market-based policies for global food security. I find substantial evidence for four strategies: multi-stakeholder fora, corporate-FAO partnerships, lobbying national governments, and revolving door practices. The four strategies help agribusinesses be involved in decision-making, increase their market and structural power, and promote the private sector as a legitimate and essential actor in the regime’s governance. The findings fit within a neo-Gramscian framework and can be interpreted as strategies used by the transnational capitalist class to support the transnationalization of social relations of production and the promotion of the neoliberal world order.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (BSc)
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China is growing as an international competitor with its gaze directed toward Africa. Chinese state-owned Multinational Corporations (MNCs) gradually gaining a foothold in African countries raise...Show moreChina is growing as an international competitor with its gaze directed toward Africa. Chinese state-owned Multinational Corporations (MNCs) gradually gaining a foothold in African countries raise worries for other investors like the West. The impacts of Chinese MNCs on the international capitalist market are researched in debt but I will connect this to the study of power relations. Not only will this give insights into the local employees as active subjects that are engaged in various relationships of power, but it will also highlight how macro and micro-level actors mutually influence each other. Eventually, I will argue that these power relations are unequal and used by actors to preserve relations of power. Central to this thesis is a discussion of power as a dynamic and socially constructed relationship that can be used to preserve structures of power. This approach toward power follows Foucault in his understanding and goes against the idea of power as a possession. Power relations become visible in Chinese Multinational Corporations (MNCs) expanding overseas to Africa which has implications for actors at both the micro and the macro-level. Power relations visualize that all actors are involved in processes of legitimizing themselves and through this process produce and reproduce power relations.Show less
