Investigating the strategic selectivity of the Kimberley Process

Abstract

This study seeks to make both a theoretical and empirical contribution to scholarly understandings of global economic governance and its impacts in the global South. To do so, it takes the Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme – a regulatory regime introduced in an attempt to stem the flow of conflict diamonds onto international markets – as its central explanandum.
In theoretical terms, this study adopts the critical realism of Bob Jessop and his strategic relational approach as a means to understand the relationship between structure and agent. Jessop maintains that the structure-agent relation represents a complex dialectic, mediated to some extent by a ‘strategic selectivity’ which works through and between structure and agent to advance the interests of capital. Through a detailed examination of the dynamics of the negotiations that founded the Kimberley Process, its implementation in a key producing state (in this case Sierra Leone) and of the regime’s reform negotiations, this study tests for the existence of strategic selectivity. At the same time, in empirical terms, it provides an important insight as to the nature of the environment in which the Kimberley Process was negotiated and its effects on a crucial implementing state.
Utilising qualitative techniques in the examination of documentary and interview data, this study finds evidence which supports the notion of the existence of strategic selectivity within the context of the Kimberley Process. In the first instance, strategic selectivity works between what this study terms as ‘wider social structure’ and agent to affect the Kimberley formative negotiations such that questions of effective regulation are subordinated to the interests of capital. Second, this study finds that upon implementation, the interests (as they perceive them) of agents working within the sector are advanced or hindered by the strategic selectivity of the Kimberley Process depending on their mode of production – artisanal or industrial. Third and finally, the evidence of this study suggests that where reforms are tabled which could affect the advantages Kimberley offers to capital, the regime’s own internal protocols and modes of operation work in combination with the wider social structure to strategically select to protect the interests of capital – leaving the regime itself remarkably resistant to change.

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ORCID for John Glenn: orcid.org/0000-0001-9694-8282

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