The impact of conflict mineral initiatives interaction on conflict minerals governance performance

Abstract

During the past five years, a range of transnational governance initiatives have been developed to deal with the conflict minerals issue. Conflict minerals are mostly found in the Great Lakes Region and are extracted under severe human rights abuses. Over the years, conflict mineral initiatives have interacted with each other in various ways and to various degrees. It is then argued that interaction between conflict mineral initiatives has contributed to the performance of the conflict minerals governance arena as a whole. First, the development of institutional characteristics and interaction characteristics of conflict mineral initiatives are mapped. Then, patterns in institutional and interaction characteristics development are compared to establish the role of interaction in shaping institutional characteristics of conflict mineral initiatives. In a next step, these results feed into a threefold analysis of the effects of interaction on conflict minerals governance performance. First, the institutional characteristics development is set against good governance principles to assess whether conflict mineral initiatives start to practice more effective governance strategies due to interaction. Second, the network structure of interacting conflict mineral initiatives is analyzed to assess whether the network structure facilitates intensive forms of interaction between conflict mineral initiatives. Third, the production of conflict-free minerals is investigated to discuss whether interaction also motivates conflict mineral initiatives to extract more conflict-free minerals from the Great Lakes Region. It is concluded that conflict mineral initiatives interact intensively with one another. Interaction positively influences the institutional characteristics development of conflict mineral initiatives by harmonizing regulatory standards, increasing stakeholder involvement, and fostering experimentation and learning opportunities. As a result, the performance of the conflict minerals governance arena as a whole is increased. The initiatives score higher on the integration of good principles. In addition, the network structure of the conflict minerals governance arena allows for more qualitative interaction, allowing good practices to spill over to other initiatives. Lastly, the production of conflict-free minerals is still modest. However, the conflict minerals governance arena is still in its infancy and it might be to early to judge its performance by its production figures. The current efforts and interaction of conflict mineral initiatives might lay the groundwork for solving the conflict minerals issue in the foreseeable future.