Combating Bribery in International Business Transactions to flesh out details in the following
areas: international cooperation; the non-tax-deductibility of bribes; accounting, auditing, and
public procurement; and measures to deter, prevent, and combat bribery.
65
Once this critical mass was met in the foreign direct investment community, introducing the
idea into an even wider, multilateral setting became quite feasible, and proponents were able
to achieve the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (U.N. Convention) in 2005. By July 2006, the U.N. Convention had 140 signatories and 60 ratifications or
accessions.
66
Beyond addressing the problem of questionable corporate conduct in foreign jurisdictions,
the antibribery conventions also suggest a shifting identity of the state in the international system. The arrangements under both the OECD and the U.N. entail similar components including the following:
Harmonizing domestic law in states that are party to the convention.
Tailoring domestic law to criminalize undesirable activities on the part of private actors
operating abroad.
Involving civil society to help bring violations to the attention of state parties.
Establishing transparency and accountability mechanisms for questionable activities of
private actors operating abroad.
Giving international processes central oversight over convention implementation (i.e., prevention, investigation, and prosecution of crimes), with a monitoring of state parties’ enforcement of the convention in their respective jurisdictions to ensure rigor.
Setting out a process whereby state parties may sort out disputes among themselves and
bring them before an international body should they not be able to settle the matter.
Allowing additional mechanisms to be created for further international cooperation under
the convention.
Through this international cooperation, states are more able to govern entities under their jurisdiction by holding them to ethical standards while not disadvantaging them vis-a `-vis competitors in markets around the world; however, states do so at a price—that is, they are
pooling power in a joint body to avoid a race to the bottom. Arguably they are upholding their
societies’ ethical standards for the sake of their own citizens, but at the same time they may
be diluting the relative political power of citizens within their polity as degrees of sovereignty
are conceded. As such, perhaps states are giving credit to the concept of global citizenship
in the Information Society.
The experience with antibribery conventions suggests international cooperation can help
overcome the difficulty that a state faces in holding companies to ethical standards when
other markets are governed by different rules. Companies had a tough time under one
country’s law requiring higher ethical standards until their counterparts elsewhere in the
world—that is, the main companies they had to compete against—became subject to similar
standards. Once a critical mass of states agreed to a common approach, companies were
Filtering and the International System
95
areas: international cooperation; the non-tax-deductibility of bribes; accounting, auditing, and
public procurement; and measures to deter, prevent, and combat bribery.
65
Once this critical mass was met in the foreign direct investment community, introducing the
idea into an even wider, multilateral setting became quite feasible, and proponents were able
to achieve the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (U.N. Convention) in 2005. By July 2006, the U.N. Convention had 140 signatories and 60 ratifications or
accessions.
66
Beyond addressing the problem of questionable corporate conduct in foreign jurisdictions,
the antibribery conventions also suggest a shifting identity of the state in the international system. The arrangements under both the OECD and the U.N. entail similar components including the following:
Harmonizing domestic law in states that are party to the convention.
Tailoring domestic law to criminalize undesirable activities on the part of private actors
operating abroad.
Involving civil society to help bring violations to the attention of state parties.
Establishing transparency and accountability mechanisms for questionable activities of
private actors operating abroad.
Giving international processes central oversight over convention implementation (i.e., prevention, investigation, and prosecution of crimes), with a monitoring of state parties’ enforcement of the convention in their respective jurisdictions to ensure rigor.
Setting out a process whereby state parties may sort out disputes among themselves and
bring them before an international body should they not be able to settle the matter.
Allowing additional mechanisms to be created for further international cooperation under
the convention.
Through this international cooperation, states are more able to govern entities under their jurisdiction by holding them to ethical standards while not disadvantaging them vis-a `-vis competitors in markets around the world; however, states do so at a price—that is, they are
pooling power in a joint body to avoid a race to the bottom. Arguably they are upholding their
societies’ ethical standards for the sake of their own citizens, but at the same time they may
be diluting the relative political power of citizens within their polity as degrees of sovereignty
are conceded. As such, perhaps states are giving credit to the concept of global citizenship
in the Information Society.
The experience with antibribery conventions suggests international cooperation can help
overcome the difficulty that a state faces in holding companies to ethical standards when
other markets are governed by different rules. Companies had a tough time under one
country’s law requiring higher ethical standards until their counterparts elsewhere in the
world—that is, the main companies they had to compete against—became subject to similar
standards. Once a critical mass of states agreed to a common approach, companies were
Filtering and the International System
95