Global Rules and Private Actors — Towards a New Role of the Transnational Corporation in Global Governance

Economic activities require the existence of rules and their enforcement as preconditions that the market cannot generate itself. Property rights, and contractual rights and obligations, are minimal prerequisites for modern societies that are provided and enforced by the state. Without such prerequisites, the market cannot flourish. The

state

thus determines regulations and delineates the sphere of private freedom, within which individual citizens and private institutions are entitled to conclude contracts with one another, to which the system of property and contractual rights compels obedience. In the development of modern nation states, the state has not only been the guarantor of

civil rights

, e. g. the right to own property, to enter into private contracts, and to engage in market activity. In its role as a democratic constitutional state, it has also been the guarantor of

political participation rights

, the right of the citizen to take part in the processes that determine public rules and issues of public concern. Finally, in its role as a welfare state, it has provided

social rights

for citizens, such as the right to education, to health care, and to other forms of welfare (Marshall 1965). The combination of state-guaranteed civil, political, and social rights has provided legitimacy, solidarity, and welfare to modern society, thereby contributing to peaceful, stable communities of anonymous individuals (Habermas 2001). Following Matten and Crane (Matten/Crane 2005) we refer to this triad of rights as

citizenship rights

.