Global South States’ Views on Building Partnerships with Corporations: An Agonistic Struggle in the UN and Beyond

Journal of Business Ethics · 2025 · Volume 197 · Issue 3

Abstract

In this article, we analyse the global consensus on the UN’s partnership approach to businesses through an agonistic lens. In doing so, we seek to understand the positioning of states, particularly those in the Global South, towards the partnership approach. We draw on Mouffe’s conceptualisation of ‘the political’, in which the appearance of consensus is always an expression of hegemony accompanied by exclusion and dissensus. First, we show that the partnership approach was initially promoted by the Global North, in particular European states together with UN leadership, against fears and criticism raised by Global South states. Second, we show that Global South states have not fundamentally challenged the idea of engaging in partnerships with businesses, but they have questioned how these partnerships should be designed to shape a more equally beneficial global economy. With this article, we contribute to the literature on the UN and business ethics by identifying how the evolution of the consensus on business partnerships has been a hegemonic arrangement since the 2000s. Furthermore, we illustrate the role that states have had in forming this consensus. We also contribute to business ethics studies engaging with dissensus by problematising the potential of ‘agonistic deliberation’ at the UN level in supporting the interests of the Global South.

Keywords

Business partnerships for development, Global South, Agonistic pluralism, States, United Nations

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