The UN’s own agency was dismantled and absorbed into pro-investment UNCTAD work

Evidence

Negotiation of the Code was formally suspended in 1992. With the Commission that it was designed to support no longer working on the Code, the Center on Transnational Corporations became increasingly embattled, and later that year the UNCTC was dispersed. Some of its staff were relocated from New York to Geneva and folded into UNCTAD’s Division on Investment and Technology, where they helped launch the annual World Investment Report, a new flagship publication that reflected well the change in attitudes at the United Nations toward multinationals (Bair 2007). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1798

Categorization

• XREF: Institutional capture story — the regulatory body disbanded and its successors promoted the very investment flows it once tried to regulate; echoes debates on revolving-door and regulatory capture. — connects to: A think tank’s expertise marketing successfully dismantled a UN regulatory body. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 163; By 2000 Heritage’s budget dwarfed UNCTAD’s and continued growing while UNCTAD’s shrank. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1836

Broader Connections

• By 2000 Heritage’s budget dwarfed UNCTAD’s and continued growing while UNCTAD’s shrank. #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1836