Institutions, Actors, and Agenda Setting: Governing Corporations in Zones of Conflict.

This paper explores the dynamics of issue definition and agenda-setting, seeking to explain how and why the problems of modern conflict and conflict prevention have been defined to include a role for the private sector, and how that issue has been taken up to varying degrees by governments, activists, and international organizations. The issue was defined and the agenda set as a result of two processes: the development of a broader corporate social responsibility agenda which has become a focal point for activism, as activists engage in a learning and emulation process across issue areas; and the movement by public authorities to strategically delegate authority and contract out conflict prevention to non-state actors, both to reduce the costs of intervention and in response to their own learning and emulation. The campaign by activists thus became part of a broader effort to institutionalize corporate participation in conflict prevention initiatives, although, as will be discussed below, this has met with only partial success. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]