The Illusory Promise of Mediation-based Governance and Private Equity's Neglected Pre-History: A Trans-Atlantic Perspective
Speakers:
Professor Colin Mackie and Professor Marc Moore, School of Law, University of Nottingham
Abstracts:
Abstract for The Illusory Promise of Mediation-based Governance:
Mediation has, traditionally, been characterised as a voluntary, consensual process, with self-determination a core value. This may no longer capture the reality. Scholars contend that the mediation process exhibits capacity to ‘govern’ where it has disputants reconfigure their selves and orientation to the conflict and align their behaviour with a guiding norm. In this way, ‘mentalities’ can be moulded by the state to secure wider political aims.
This article provides empirically grounded insights into mediation-based governance in the context of environmental disputes. It analyses complaints handled by National Contact Points, state-based non-judicial grievance mechanisms, which seek to resolve alleged breaches of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct. These aim to enhance businesses’ contribution to sustainable development and address the adverse impacts it has on people, planet, and society. When the empirical reality is mapped against theoretical understandings of mediation-based governance, points of internal tension emerge which present challenges and opportunities: (in)consistency in the state’s influence over negotiations, background levels of (dis)trust between disputants and its (future-orientated) temporal focus. Until these are remedied, it will remain incapable of realising wider political aims, such as sustainable development. Private interests are too deeply ingrained and prevailing power structures too dominant.
Abstract for Private Equity's Neglected Pre-History: A Trans-Atlantic Perspective:
Large-scale private equity (“PE”) buyouts, and the increasingly gargantuan financial firms that spearhead them, are commonly regarded as staples of today’s financialised corporate economy. However, this has not always been the case and, up until recently, PE firms and funds were still being heralded as a novel and revolutionary force in corporate finance and governance. Many observers would regard PE’s effective “year dot” as being 1976, when the pioneering New York LBO boutique Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (“KKR”) came into existence. However, in this paper, we will seek to demonstrate that, far from being a modern phenomenon that only emerged in the 1970s, PE has a considerably longer pedigree: in fact, its effective origination can be traced back a whole century earlier to the 1870s rather than 1970s. We will further demonstrate how the common perception of PE as a purely US-originated phenomenon – that only latterly made inroads in the UK and other geographic settings from the 1980s onwards – is also an oversimplification, given that PE buyouts originated much earlier than this in the UK too, and were engendered by markedly different pressures and circumstances to those at play in the United States at the relevant points in time.
All welcome to attend.