Transnational Law and Local Struggles: Mining Communities and the World Bank. By David Szablowski

Transnational Law and Local Struggles: Mining Communities and the World Bank. By David Szablowski. Oxford, United Kingdom: Hart Publishing, 2007. Pp. 352. $70.00 cloth; $40.00 paper. Theoretically and empirically, this book offers a provocative and rich discussion on the intersection between transnational law and local struggles that emerge in a transnational mining project in the global south. Empirically, by presenting a "highly contextual, specific analysis" (p. 289), Szablowski identifies the benefits and dangers of such intersections by carefully tracing the interaction of the actors involved (i.e., the transnational mining company, the local population, and the World Bank). Szablowski examines the dynamics of legitimation, its connection to regulation, and how it is pursued both inside and outside state structures. The book is divided into two parts. The first examines the development of transnational legal regimes and their relationship to other forms of law, while the second part delves into the practical concerns of transnational legal ordering in regulating local environments. The first part comprises four chapters. The first addresses how law is internalized into informal legal process and legitimated. The proliferation of transnational law creates particular types of political identities and political engagement. In the second chapter, Szablowski shows how the Peruvian state takes either a prominent or distant role in mediating corporate/community claims. In either case, he exposes the lack of participation by the local population in the process. Further, when the state is distant, the mining company takes a great deal of the responsibility for social mediation, developing a local space of informal legal ordering to deal with local interests. Therefore, the mining company controls and regulates, while community actors find their rights circumscribed with limited possibilities for bargaining. The third chapter focuses on transnational legal regimes aimed at mining and community conflicts. As globalization opens up possibilities for transnational companies, it also enables the formation of transnational advocacy networks to censor their activities. On the one hand, companies are working with transnational organizations to develop legal standards for global industries called certification institutions. Transnational firms adopt certification institutions to diffuse critics, and to provide legitimacy to the industry. Most certification institutions tend to rely on the firm's discretion to interpret and implement standards, avoiding the language of rights and obligations. World Bank agencies have become certification institutions, enforcing mandatory safeguard policies for the projects they finance. Important to note, these policies provide procedural definitions of "social responsibility." On the other hand, critics challenge certification institutions, arguing that self-regulation is comparable to no regulation (with the implicit intention to regulate the industry). Chapter four looks at the World Bank safeguard policy's structure and characteristics to assess its regulatory credibility. …