A New Geography of Power in IR | Juanamaría Vázquez

ISA 59TH Annual Convention:

Power of Rules and Rule of Power
San Francisco, California, USA
April 4th - 7th, 2018

A New Geography of Power in IR: Is Private Authority and Territoriality Effacing

the State Agency?

Abstract
Over 50 million hectares of land across the globe have been acquired by Multinational Corporations’
joint ventures. The burst of high prices for the commodities during the food, and financial crises in
2007-08 gave rise to one of the recent leading business in the past ten years: massive land
acquisitions in developing countries to grow agricultural commodities, and large financial investors
have become one of the driving forces behind these land investments. These land investments have
caused diverse political, social and economic disruptions showing the nature of these powerful non-
state actors in the world scene.

Based on structural power approach, this paper aims at introducing the perspective of private
authority on the IR debate, to understand how current financial institutions/corporations are
developing their authority and power, pervading the structures of the State and its territory through
the massive land investments. In this context, the State is being challenged in its authority and
territoriality, giving rise to a new geography of power for these actors. At the same time, the paper
is identifying the main structures of power from financial corporations, and it’s also analyzing how
these structures are legitimized by the global financial system and its institutions.1

1
This paper is part of my PhD. research about the massive land acquisitions by large multinational
corporation’s alliances

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 A New Geography of Power in IR | Juanamaría Vázquez

“Financial wealth consists in promises and nothing else”

W.G. Langworthy T. (Langworthy, 1905)

Introduction
Global massive land acquisitions made by large multinational agribusiness and financial corporations
have contributed to challenging the State authority and territoriality with direct impact over its society
and infringing the land rights from local native communities. Also, the emergence of an international
private authority has expanded the geographies of power for the international private sector,
challenging at the same time the former central position of the State in the international interstate
system, stepping aside from its position and giving rise to numerous other players in the global
governance. The problem that supposes the rising power of international private sector, and
particularly from large financial corporations is that most of its impacts go directly on the societies
from developing countries, through the financialization of every social practice as it is seen in this
paper.

This way it has been unfolded a major global structure: the global financial system, which now
remains unregulated or at least with a weak self-regulation (financial governance), which avoids any
type of external limit or legal constrain by the State (i.e. through government policies) (Fuchs, 2013);
meanwhile, it seems that the whole financial architecture has pervaded almost any little aspect of
human life and sector, through the financialization process, including any agricultural and food sector
in almost every country worldwide (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S. Ryan, 2018; Fairbairn M. , 2014;
Sassen S. , 2015).

Thus, the financialization of the agrifood system has implied the incorporation of its farm production
into a financialized realm where the practice of highly sophisticated tools and mechanisms are used
to abstract the everyday social practices such as the agriculture, the farmland cropping, or the food
itself, and through this complex system of abstraction has developed new forms of profitability, but
engendering big risks and costs for the society (Clapp J. , 2012). The 2007-08 food crisis is a such an
example of this situation.

What it’s important to emphasize is that this situation hadn’t been possible without the global and the
local transformations unfolded during the eighties decade and without the State’s compliance. This
context gave rise to a new global architecture that allowed the transnational corporation and the
private sector (mainly the financial system) to acquire a new role in the global scenario (Sassen S. ,

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2013; Sassen S. , 2015). The problem with the role of the private sector and the power they have
acquired, is that they are threatening and setting major risks over the most vulnerable societies in
developing countries and even in the emergent ones.

One of the major problems ubicated by this paper is the growing global set of complex mechanisms
that are framing the power of the transnational corporations including financial firms, that at the same
time are impinging on the State territory (from developing and emergent countries mainly), through
the large-scale massive land acquisition by these actors; but also, creating new risks and costs to the
local native communities that inhabit those lands. This has created a local resistance, but as J. Clapp
(Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S. Ryan, 2018) has stated, the performance of those complex mechanisms
created by sophisticated finances (financialization), are obscuring the way in which local resistance
can challenge the global capital.

This paper is divided in three sections: section one, is about the methodology and theoretical
approaches utilized in the making of the paper; section two, is about the context of the large massive
land acquisitions by transnational corporations, and the role of the State in the problem, and section
three, is about the analysis and conclusions of the paper.

Finally, this paper highlights the structural power approach (Strange, 2004) and by means of two sub-
approaches the financialization conceptualization (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S. Ryan, 2018) and the
private authority concept (Cutler A. C., 2003; Sassen S. , 2013), the evolving situation of the modern
State regarding the impact of the international private sector’ performance (financial firms) in
domestic societies, particularly in developing countries through the massive land acquisition. This
research is still in the making and it is showing the preliminary results of it.

Methodology
One of the driving questions for this research has been: how do the financial corporations have
expanded their power on the State through the massive land acquisitions? Also, to answer this, it was
important to develop a methodological question:

 With the current economic globalization there has been a global expansion of the massive
land acquisitions by transnational corporations. So, before the 2007-08 food crisis, was there
the same access to the land (territory) in developing and emerging countries from the
expansion of transnational agricorporations and financial firms? What factors make a

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difference in both periods (before globalization and afterward) regarding the private sector
practices that allow the reconfiguration of global power (new geographies of power)?

Recent theoretical approaches have broadened the scope of power analysis, such in the case of D.
Fuchs (Fuchs, 2013) who develops the three-dimensional power approach (structural, instrumental
and discursive power), and which further helps to understand the transnational corporation’s influence
and power in the global economy. Thus, based on both approaches from S. Strange and D. Fuchs, this
paper proposes to analyze the emergence of the private authority and the reconfiguration of the global
power among States and non-state actors (transnational financial corporations), in a global context of
wide expansion of large-scale massive land acquisitions in developing and emergent countries to gain
control over natural resources and land, this last one as integral part of territory.

Therefore, it has been also utilized two theoretical sub-approaches: On one side, the approach of the
private authority (Sassen S. , 2013; Cutler A. C., 2003) that allows understanding the emergence of
new geographies of power and the expansion of influential non-state agents. And on the other side,
the use of financialization as the process that have a direct impact other social, economic, and political
issues of everyday life (as in this case of the farmland), through the pervasiveness of sophisticated
financial practices, mechanisms, tools and motives on them (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S. Ryan, 2018).

It has been elaborated a matrix of concepts to detail what the variables are to be operationalized. In
this case, the most important variables in this study are power, private authority, financialization, and
land as financial asset (Table 1).

Table 1. Matrix of operationalized variables

Variable Detected issues Related concept Reconceptualization
Operationalized variables
Financialization Natural resources: mining, Financialization Natural resources like
water, oil financial asset

Financialization Land Financialization Land as financial asset +

+ Ownership and
Foreignization privatization of land in
foreign countries
Authority Global investment rating Private authority
agencies
Authority International arbitration for Private authority
trade or financial disputes Legal support for TNC

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Power Lobbying (not always a Power Lobbying as a resource of

legal factor) power (use of capital funds
to engage governments
into corporation interests)2
Power and authority Vetoing or approval to Due to States needs of
international credit access international credit, the
international financial
organisms deny or approve
their credit applications
Source: Elaborated by the author (2018)

Structural power approach

Inside the IR discipline, there have been several important debates regarding the power analysis,
giving rise to numerous approaches regarding the influence of the actors in the interstate system. Most
of them are related to the State performance in this interstate system. Nevertheless, the emergence of
non-state actors and the pressure of the international private sector in the global economy requires
another type of theoretical approach that helps to understand the new geography of power in the
global scenario beyond the traditional international interstate system where the central agent was the
State.

This way, S. Strange was one of the leading scholars talking about the power of the financial system
and the transnational corporations in the international arena, therefore focusing on the reach of their
behavior. Strange stated that structural power confers the power to decide how things shall be done.
It is about the power to shape frameworks within which the States relates to each other, or relate to
people or relate to corporate enterprises. It’s about how a party determines the surrounding structure
of the relationship (Strange, 2004). Additionally, the current international context of economic
globalization has deepened the tensions and crisis in every single aspect of the global economy,
including the political and social sectors.

The reconfiguration of the global scenery and the emergence of numerous players gave rise to new
theoretical approaches such as global governance to understand the interplay between diverse agents
such as large multinational corporations. Nevertheless, there’s a need to explain the rise of power of

2
In 2013, Obama signed H.R. 933 resolution known as the Monsanto Protection act (An addition to the
Agricultural Appropriations Bill). Since 2009, the big agrifood corporations gave the US Congress an amount
of 7.5 million of dls. https://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-protection-act-signed-by-obama-gmo-bill-
written-by-monsanto-signed-into-law/5329388

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these actors and theoretical approaches such as three-dimensional power approach (Fuchs, 2013)
which includes the structural power approach, allows an improved emphasis in power relations.

Out of the three-dimensional approach (multidimensional approach), this paper uses the structural
approach applied to transnational corporations, which states that international private sector has
acquired a major role in the global economy but also, has risen their power due to the use of large
resources such as money, lobbying, pressure etc. (Fuchs, 2013). Therefore, it is needed to recognize
the sources or resources of power that allow the large corporations to increase their performance in
the global economy. There are two major structures that allow the rise of new power resources:
1) Agenda setting
2) Rule setting

S. Strange (Strange, 2004) the agenda setting is important but, structural power goes beyond that.
When the private authority of international financial institutions grants a credit to any State, the
contracting government can be subject to further obligations beyond the credit line, i.e. the structural
adjustment programs that were highly known by developing countries during the eighties decade.
Structural power set the economic or rather the financial foundations for the rules of the game (rules
setting form). For D. Fuchs (Fuchs, 2013) both structures are part of the material structural power,
in a passive and active form. Namely, agenda-setting is the passive way in which the transnational
corporations set the rules of power and the rule setting form is the active way to have an influence in
the global arena by large business corporations.

Both structures come out from the sociological debate kept by S. Lukes (Lukes, 2005) versus the
ideas of the pluralist school of R. Dahl (Dahl, 1957) and the views of P. Bachrach and M. Baratz
(Bachrach, 2000), and then they are resumed by D. Fuchs (Fuchs, 2013). S. Strange also resumed S.
Lukes views for their structural power approach. For this approach, it’s important to understand both
structures due to the participation of the large transnational corporations’ performance in the decision-
making process, whenever their interests are at stake. In fact, the decision-making process and the
interests are two factors that mobilize the analysis of power.

One of the issues, that concerns this research is the matter of the control. Bachrach and Baratz see
this as a type of power. This is important because through the agent is securing the compliance
through the control of any situation or behavior by means of threat of sanctions (Bachrach, 2000;
Lukes, 2005). In the case of the State, usually it uses the coercion to get the compliance of the law,

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but it is important to highlight that private authority resorts to economic sanctions as the way to get
things accomplished. i.e. the control over natural resources has implied the expansion of resources of
power for the transnational corporations and they are securing them through their influence over the
host State.

Transnational corporations and their resources of power

Several scholars agree upon the growing power and influence of these transnational agents. But
regarding the resources of power analysis can be a point of disagreement. In fact, globalization and
the previous economics stage, grant them the access to legal and economic and financial resources
never seen before,
a) the capital mobility
b) the emergence of the private authority which serves as the basis for their expansion
c) the global and legal self-regulation with non-trade barriers and lax regulation in financial services
d) the amendments made to domestic legal frameworks to suit the foreign investment
e) the State competition for the foreign capital and investments

First is needed to understand that the expansion of the non-state agents (transnational corporations)
is due to the liberalization of the global economy (a, b), with no strings attached to market regulation,
and without commercial barriers that could ban the international trading system (c). Regarding the
financial system, since the fall of the Bretton Woods system, and the free flow of exchange currency,
its expansion to the rest of the global economy has opened the door to the financialization of the
primary sectors, namely the agricultural and the environmental areas. This allowed the growth of new
ways of capital accumulation (Harvey, 2010).

Second, the emergence of private authority and private normative and standards provided the legal
foundation for the expansion of the financial and trading system (Sassen S. , 2013). The expansion of
the private authority has been allowed by the interstate system when the States has been diffusing
their power or at least transferring part of their power and authority to the private sector (Hall &
Biersteker, 2004). This finally is part of the States competition to attract the foreign investors into
their nations (Strange, 2004).

Third, the close relation between State and high finances and its financial corporations has modified
the way the power is seen. In the case of the large land acquisitions, States have a have a big role in

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the access of foreign capital investments in their territory’ lands, and even more when large financial
firms are investing in their countries.

In the other hand, to D. Fuchs (Fuchs, 2013), the existence of networked coordination services firms
functions as the interface between rating agencies, global accounting firms or international law firms,
and this way the structural power is expanded in the rest of the global arena. But also, the
establishment of the global governance, the setting of the rules and international standards are not
only structural resources of power, but the basis of the international private authority emergence,
which interplays with State through the public-private partnership arrangements.

Private Authority approach

The emergence private authorities such as private legal institutions, arbitrages, private legal
frameworks and normative, or international rating agencies respond to the global demands and the
pressure of the globalization processes in which the transnational agents such as the transnational
corporations exert pressures across the borders (Sassen S. , 1996); at the same time, the economic
globalization is also exerting pressure against the still nation-state creating processes of
denationalizing and deterritorialization of the State (Sassen S. , 2013).

At first, private authority is defined as the integrated complex of formal and informal institutions that
is a source of governance for an economic issue area (Hall & Biersteker, 2004). The process of
legitimacy for these institutions is given inside of the same set of agents and institutions, but also the
State has recognized the legitimacy of this private authority in the very moment in which the State is
subject to be rated by international rating agencies or subject to the international trading arbitrages
such as London Court of International Arbitrage (LCIA) (Cutler C. A., 2001).

To Hall and Biersteker, power is closely related to authority, with the difference set in the way each
one claims to legitimacy. As the authors claim, legitimacy implies the idea of normative, uncoerced
consent/recognition of its authority from those ruled or governed (Ibid., P. 5). They are posing the
notion that authority doesn’t necessarily mean that it comes from government institutions but from
private institutions. Therefore, the emergence of private sector comes along with its own authority
due to a set of standards, normative and mechanisms that allow it to expand into the global scenery.

First, there’s a need to understand the emergence of influential non-state agents such as the
international institutions. But previously, in the eighties, the reformulation of the processes within

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international financial system needed the breakdown of the former Bretton Woods system: the
reappearance of the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund with new rules, both were
setting the basis for the new deregulation stage in international economy for the neoliberal
implementation system, along with the World Trade Organization in the nineties. These were the
beginnings of the international private authority.

Within the context of the current globalization, there is the emergence of influential agents as the
large multinational corporations. But, all these powerful players have not been yet fully integrated
into the global scenery, since they lack some representativeness, that engender a certain type of
invisibility in the international law (Cutler A. C., 2003). In fact, the modern State has been fully
recognized as the main and the only subject of international law and organization (including the
international institutions and organisms). When referring to the international interstate system, there’s
a gap about the reference to the non-state agents (transnational corporations) which are visualized as
de facto objects of the law (Ibid.). This situation engenders some legal ambiguity that makes large
companies globally unaccountable or responsible for any major conflict or illegal situation.3

Financialization approach
This approach is based on J. Clapp (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S. Ryan, 2018; Clapp J. , 2012) research
studies about the deep process of financialization in the agrifood system. Nevertheless, S. Sassen
(Sassen S. , 2013) has also contributed to the research of the financialization effects in the State and
the society. The financialization in the agrifood system entails a direct impact on the whole food value
chain. It has been claimed there has been a historical bound between finances, food, and agriculture
(Weber, 2000) and farmland is a central part of this linkage.

Current financialization entails the use of vast set of highly sophisticated mechanisms and tools to
engender profits through the abstraction of the social practices, but also with direct impacts and
consequences for the society, some of them are the risks and the social costs (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson
S. Ryan, 2018; Sassen S. , 2012). Also, G. Arrighi has shown the extent of the social polarization due
to the expansion of the financialization (Arrighi, 2010, p. 325). This way the use of high-tech inside
of the sophisticated financial mechanisms has deepened and complexed the agricultural commodities
exchange to engender and rise the profits, but also to expand the links with actual reality. The more

3
Global network of non-governmental organizations and activists resort to bad publicity and international
courts to sue the transnational corporations when they infringe the domestic law.

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complex the financial process, the riskier the impacts in the social reality (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S.
Ryan, 2018).

Thus, the financialization has transformed into the new superstructure that embraces at the same time
all the major power resources to create risks and costs not only for the survival of the State, but for
the societies due to the binding ties that financial markets have engendered with all the primary sectors
of the global economy, generating at the same time new areas of profitability for the capital
accumulation (Ibid., p.). The new fields of financial profitability through the financial markets
(derivatives, futures), originated into the primary sectors (agriculture, food, livestock or land) are
posing new areas of social and environmental tensions.

II part. The challenging issue of large-scale and massive land acquisitions

XXI century has been highly turbulent, starting with a whole set of crises (oil-energy, climate change,
financial and food crisis). The constant search for renewable energy sources as an alternative to oil
energy has enabled a huge competition among enterprises. Among them, biofuels were introduced as
one of these significant alternatives to fighting climate change. Nevertheless, the mass production of
agricultural crops (soy, maize, sugar cane, palm oil, among others) engender new problems (De
Gorter, 2013).

The initial intention was that biofuels were sustainable, and they have proved they are not as
sustainable as they were promised. The industry of biofuels is everything but sustainable. Basically,
they required tons of off-farm materials to be produced in farmland (nitrogen, fertilizers, pesticides,
genetically modified seeds, machinery etc.). With this, the agricultural industrialization has highly
promoted and increased the productivity and profitability of the farm production, but it also has
increased the vulnerability of the biophysical conditions of production (Gillon, 2012).

Currently, the model of agricultural production as in this case of first-generation biofuels4 has
developed a model of agriculture that works well for the industrial sectors. Also, the biofuels industry
has been State-supported due to biofuels mandates,5 its products are part of an agriculturally-based
industry that provides a big investment opportunity for the industry in research, processing and
distribution infrastructure (Gillon, 2012).

4
First generation-biofuels are known those produced out of staple agricultural raw material: soy, maize, palm
oil, sugar cane
5
The OCDE countries unfolded a series of biofuels mandates to develop the production (De Gorter, 2013)

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Thereby, the 2007-08 juncture showed that the 2006 massive agricultural farm production to generate
ethanol and biodiesel, was one of the key factors that resulted into the high rise of the food prices (De
Gorter, 2013) inside of the financial markets (derivatives, futures), which finally led to the serious
food crises and social tensions that entailed several civil unrests and protests in developing countries
during those years. This was the result of the financialized agrifood system as a starting point, that
ended with the process of financialization in the farmland engendering new social costs for the rural
communities and society in developing countries (Clapp J. , 2012).

As financialization process has shown in the last decade during the 2007-08 food crisis, the private
actors from financial system have resorted to the massive land acquisitions as a hedge insurance
against inflation, but mainly to increase their profits through the massive development of cropping
farmland due to the rise of food prices inside of the financial markets which resulted in an array of
benefits and profits. Biofuels was the reference for the major benefits in financial markets, which
motivated also the business idea of acquiring foreign land in developing and emergent countries with
large natural resources and vast tracts of land (foreignization) (Zoomers, 2010).

Figure 1. The ten major country investors in farmland

Source: Elaborated by the author based on data from Land Matrix database (2018)
During the 2007-08 crisis, diverse large multinational corporations from agribusiness and financial
sectors began to acquire (purchasing or leasing) massive tracts of land6 in the territory of developing
and emergent countries (Grain, 2008; Anseew, et al., 2012) with large natural resources with the

6
Process known as foreignization

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intention of getting major profits out of land through the financial derivative markets
(financialization) (Fairbairn M. , 2014; Visser, 2016). According to Land Matrix database, the
worldwide extension of acquired land by corporations and State governments is about 50, 534,384
hectares (Land Matrix,, 2017). Figure 1, shows the largest acquisitions in developing countries by
major investors.

Many of these acquired lands are ubicated in strategic zones of the host country, such as borderlines,
or over vast areas of water (aquifers), or over large mineral pool resources or in wide open
conservation zones (jungles, mangles, rainforest) (Fairbairn M. , 2015). These wide and extensive
acquired land has been used to develop huge zones of monocrops farms to produce first generation-
biofuels. Monocrop farming is based on intensive use of water, bearing in mind that in several cases
the acquired land is on top of large naturals resources such as aquifers, mines, or wildlife reserves
such as in the case of Brazil, Indonesia, Congo, etc. countries where those companies have bought
large extensions of land (Land Matrix,, 2017) (See figure 2).

Figure 2. Ten countries with the major land acquisitions

Global land acquisitons by target country

LIBERIA 1,883,871
RUSSIAN FED. 2,290,852
CONGO 2,303,379
MOZAMBIQUE 2,522,780
UKRAINE 2,606,502
SOUTH SUDAN 2,691,453
BRAZIL 3,048,838
INDONESIA 3,235,335
PAPUA NEW GUINEA 3,792,653
DRC 7,054,831

0 2,000,000 4,000,000 6,000,000 8,000,000

Source: Elaborated by the author based on data from Land Matrix database (2018)

The recent business of acquiring massive tracts of land in developing countries with large natural
resources, is giving the corporations7 the access to control over vast areas of foreign land (Zoomers,
2010). The issue here is the control that the corporation obtained over the land that belongs to the
territory of the State, once the land is bought, and that is owned by a title and further on privatized.

7
Energy, agribusiness and financial corporations

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One additional problem is that many local small landholders such as peasants and indigenous
communities8 are dispossessed by local authorities when these communities have no land titles, taking
advantage of this situation to favor foreign land investment, and adapting the local legislation to
foreign companies needs (Sassen S. , 2015).

One of the major problems triggered with the massive land acquisition is the issue of the amendments
to domestic land legislation. This question has entailed and raised many land concerns: a) the potential
and factual dispossession of vast tract of inherited land to native communities when their land is
considered as terra nullius9, b) the lobbying process by elite groups (landowners, large corporations
etc.) to influence the decision-making process regarding land policies c) the economic globalization
has widely contributed to the amendments in domestic law, through to the governance of the natural
resources including land.

The territory of the State

In IR discipline we have faced a major theoretical and methodological crisis because of lack of
explanation regarding the global changes in the interstate system and for the most part about the
evolving situation of the State on it. This agent-actor has been challenged by pre-globalization and
globalization processes. This situation placed the State away from the central stage in the global arena,
allowing other players such as civil society organizations and large multinational corporations to try
to develop their own position and power. Now, in this very moments of the fully globalized world,
and after the 2007-08 financial and food crisis, there are new processes and tensions that are
challenging the State at the very depth of its foundation: its territory.

The territory of the State entails not only the physical space but the area where the government and
the population are living in. At the same time, is the space where the sovereignty, the authority and
the territoriality of the State take place, all of them as the central parts of its power. Thus, the territory
is understood as an extension of the whole land of a nation. Terra, territorĭum is significant as the
land that belongs to a territory. The territory must not be understood as the property of the ruler, or
the jurisdiction as the quality of the territorĭum, but instead “the territorĭum as the object of the rule
itself” (Elden, 2011, p. 265).

8
Most of them are not entitled to their own land because of a major structural problem in their own countries
such the lack of land allocation or failing in the land policies.
9
Land belonging to no one, null land

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Even though, the territory under the control of the State should be questioned just like the
conceptualization derived from Westphalia treaties, where the ius territoralis is recognized as part of
the States as territorial right (Ibid., Pg. 266). The conceptualization of the territory is bound to the
State, not only because of this historical and legal binding tie, but just because the territory of a nation
has been space where cultural, social and even political-economic practices take place. It’s also the
space where the population is living in, along with those practices, traditions that reshape the
idiosyncrasy and character of a society (Sassen S. , 2014).

According to J. Agnew (Agnew, 2008), the territory refers to a “unit of contiguous space that is used,
organized, managed by a social group, individual person or institutions to restrict and control access
to people and places”. At the same time, he defines territoriality as the strategic use of the territory
to reach the organization’s goals. In fact, in the broadest sense, he expands the concept territoriality
not only as an organization of land, but also as the exercise of power.

Currently, in this globalization era, the State features have been questioned from the rise to the
bottom. Also, the domestic legal framework that supported and ensured the State stability and
autonomy once, now it has been questioned because it did not fit the changing structures of the
globalization and the neoliberal system adopted ever since. So, deregulation and State non-
intervention in the economy and the free market economy has been the main premise. Now it is
witnessed a new kind of legal frameworks based on soft law, where the private lawmaking is
spreading its landmark.

The State and the private actors

According to J. Ruggie, the modern State with a territorial system of rule, possess some distinctive
features: sovereignty, territoriality, and authority. The authority of the State has been consolidated
throughout time into a public realm after the profuse expansion of fragmented private authorities. In
fact, the modern State claimed the monopolization of the legitimate use of the force and the only
central authority to enforce the law. Thus, the modern State consolidated its system of rules into a
“territorially defined, fixed and mutually exclusive enclaves of legitimate dominion” (Ruggie, 1993)
Nevertheless, current globalization processes have contested every traditional aspect of the modern
State as it was conceived.

The concentration of power (territoriality, authority, sovereignty, legitimate legal use of force) in the
modern State, has curbed until some decades ago any possible appearance or emergence of private

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power or private authority over the State. Historically, the private sector has been limited under the
authority of the government (king, minister, president etc.). It’s important to highlight that the modern
State has never gotten an unlimited power, but it has had a whole set of means and mechanisms to
impose its authority inside what was called the national territory and its borders (Tilly, 1992).

With the entry of the economic globalization processes in the international arena,10 new forces came
up and claimed its own space of power and recognition, challenging the role of the State which no
longer stays at the central stage. Also, lots of pressures and demands were placed over the State and
its territory entailing significant consequences; i.e. the market forces pressured for the none
intervention of the State in the economy, giving place to self-regulation. The same happened for the
financial system, once extinguished the former Bretton Woods system, and its former fixed exchange
currency, it gave place to a new era of global financial rules (Sassen S. , 1996; Sassen S. , 2012).

It’s also important to notice that the State has also changed its relationship with the private sector,
particularly with the high finances in the later decades (Nexus State-finances) as D. Harvey or G.
Arrighi have claimed (Harvey, 2010; Arrighi, 2010). To access to the international credit or to attract
foreign investments, particularly when the global financial system has concentrated the access to
money (capital), the State has usually made amendments to the domestic legal framework, competing
with other States. In fact, the very existence of international institutions with private authority such
as the IMF and the WBG, have been some of the driving forces compelling States into the
globalization process to give rise to the new era of soft law or self-regulation legal frameworks. Here
there is a foundational change in globalization: the none-barrier stage for the trade and financial
system or the emergence of the private authority.

Also, the existence of private authority requires a law-enforcement mechanism. There is a difference
in the law-enforcement between the State and the private sector. Meanwhile the domestic legal
framework generated by the modern State was enforced by the legal and legitimate coercion used to
compel its implementation; on the other hand, the new legal frameworks that have been generated by
non-State agents (private sector, agents, institutions, etc.) are using the support of the economic
sanction to enforce their private law frameworks, such as boycotts, economic sanctions or either the
disavowal to access the credits requested by State governments.

10
Globalization can be situated at the end of the Bretton Wood system in the seventies of XX century.

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The prevailing self-regulation is a central part of the trade and the financial system. Daily unrestricted
global capital flows going in and out of the countries, being just an example of State waning power
and authority. Also, tax heavens where multinational corporations are sending their high revenues,
show how the States have been unable to control the capital flows out of their own jurisdictions. Thus,
global market liberalization not only required the freedom of trade and financial system, but also the
possibility to transnationalize the capital across the frontiers; it required a legal foundation inside the
national borders that allow it to expand their business or their investments. With the entry of the
nineties and the development of new technologies and communications, capital flows going across
the borders created a boom for global expansion of the large business (Sassen S. , 2012; Sassen S. ,
2013).

Brazilian case: Cosan corporation and its ties to TIAA

As several authors have researched, many domestic large companies are allying themselves (joint
ventures) with large renown foreign companies (Fairbairn M. , 2015; Cotula, 2016; Dyer, 2013) to
buy large areas of farmland. These large tracts of land go from 10,000 hectares (24700 acres) up to
1,000, 000 hectares (2,471,53 acres). In some cases, large companies have bought 2,000,000
(4,942,108 acres) (Land Matrix,, 2017). Also, according to Land Matrix database, Brazil ranks
between the 4th and 5th place as the country that concentrates most of the global farmland sales (See
also fig. 2), with an amount of 2,417,309 hectares (Land Matrix,, 2017).

Thus, global massive land acquisition creates a direct challenge over one of the foundations of the
State: its territory. This situation goes further when the land is bought and privatized by alliances
made among large global corporations and domestic ones (Dyer, 2013; Fairbairn M. , 2015) as it has
been the Brazilian joint venture between Cosan and TIAA giving rise to Radar.11 For some authors,
the main drive to acquire massive tracts of land in other countries is to produce food and biofuels for
export (Zoomers, 2010). On that basis, one of the main targets of these companies is about to have
control on the raw materials for agricultural production (Fernandes, 2012), therefore the access and
control of natural resources (such as water) and farmland in foreign developing countries
(foreignization).

Cosan S.A is a domestic large multinational corporation that started as sugar and ethanol industry at
the beginning of the XX century.12 Currently, Cosan has taken advantage of the globalization and has

11
http://cosan.com.br/en/cosan
12
http://www.cosan.com.br/pt-br

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made diverse alliances with foreign large corporations such as TIAA13 and Royal Dutch Shell to
create second large enterprises inside Brazil; in the first case the enterprise created was Radar, and in
the second one, they created Raízen. Combining both cases, the total amount of land acquisitions
acquired by Cosan S.A overtook the one million hectares, but it also shows the networked
transnational alliances, creating one of the largest business in Brazil with a big influence in domestic
politics (See figure 3).

Figure 3. Two cases of multinational and domestic corporation’s expansion in Brazilian farmland

860,000 hectares 270,000 hectares

Nova Gaia Brazil

Participacoes Ltd.

RADAR
Tellius Participacoes Ltd TIAA CREF USA (hoy TIAA)

EXXON MOBIL COSAN Mansilla Ltd.

Brasil
RAIZEN
Old large land owners
Royal Dutch
R
WILMAR Shell Brasil
A Old large landlords
INC W
RD SHELL Holanda

Source: Elaborated by the author based on data from Grain (Grain, 2008) and Cosan S.A. (2018)
The case to be briefly analyzed is the TIAA Pension Funds. This financial institution is the top largest
and strongest financial institution in the USA, regarding the pension funds. It’s rated as the first largest
global investor in agriculture.14 This pension fund is one of the leading foreign investors in Brazilian
agriculture and farmland. A public report from TIAA, states that the company has invested 3 billion
dollars in farmland up to September 30th, 2012, and claiming that the gross of the acquired farmland
is about 600,000 acres divided across 400 properties in North America, South America Australia, and
Europe,15 but other sources claim that TIAA has acquired 1.6 million of land across the world
(Farthing, 2017). Reports from GRAIN16 (ONG), Land Matrix and the New York Times journal,17

13
Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association—College Retirement Equities Fund. Since 2016 it’s only TIAA.
14
2017 Facts and Stats https://www.tiaa.org/public/pdf/facts_stats.pdf
15
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/americas/tiaa-cref-us-investment-giant-accused-of-land-grabs-
in-brazil.html?_r=0
16
https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5521-court-rules-that-brazilian-businessman-who-sold-lands-to-tiaa-
cref-acquired-lands-illegally
17
Ibíd

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reported that TIAA-CREF Global Agriculture LLC fund, has acquired approximately 633,391 acres
(approx. 270,000 hectares) (Land Matrix,, 2017), but this figure was only in Brazil, through its
alliance with Cosan: Radar.

As consequence of the large tracts of land purchased by foreign investors in Brazil, the price of land
has risen fivefold since 2003 (Thoumi, 2017). In fact, the Cerrado region is one of the most attractive
places for foreign investors due to its extensive savannas and natural resources, is considered as the
last Brazilian agricultural frontier that covers the 24% of the Brazilian country (2 million kms2). It
also hosts 8 out of the 12 hydrological regions including the Guarani aquifer, the second largest
underground reservoir of water in the world (Reis, et al., 2017).

The Cerrado region also comprises the Brazilian states of an economic region called MATOPIBA
(Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia). In this region, TIAA Global Agriculture LLC has acquired
the largest tract of farmland with Cosan. The acquired farmland is in operation since 2010 and it is
utilized for agriculture, biofuels and food crops (known as flex-crops) (Land Matrix,, 2017). The area
bought by TIAA-Radar is full of natural resources. (Fig. 4)

Fig. 4. El Cerrado region, Brazil.

Source: Ignez Pitta, The Economist.

Due to large financial operations performed by large players such as TIAA (pension funds, hedge
funds, etc.) the financialization process is taking hold in Brazilian regions as in the case of
MATOPIBA. TIAA’s participation in the outright purchase of 270,000 hectares of land, currently
under operation gives the idea of how important the farmland and its value are for financial markets.

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Even under the international pressure from mass-media regarding the land grabbing accusations of
illegal land purchasing and land dispossession, there hasn’t been a restriction or legal action from
Brazilian government against the pension fund (TIAA).18

Since expropriation is not an option among democratic countries, this massive land acquisition by
large corporations is concentrating not only extensive natural resources (mining, water, oil,
agriculture), but also the land as a part of the Brazilian State’s territory. The land has become a
financial asset, strategic asset for the capital accumulation and resource of power for TNC. As Clapp
and Isakson have stated, that pension funds make use of flexible mechanisms of financial investment
that allow them to keep gaining high profits without too much exposure and risk. That is the case of
the called commodity index funds, where the investor doesn’t have the requirement to buy directly
commodity future contracts (Clapp, Jennifer; Isakson S. Ryan, 2018).

The point here is that every time speculative markets (derivatives, futures) finds a new financial
vehicle to be invested in by large agribusiness investors, the direct impact on farmland and food
systems is even bigger, with large and important consequences for the real agricultural sector, and
beyond, risks for the most vulnerable people in societies: peasants, small producers farm workers.
Some of the factors that allow the investors to keep investing in the land are:
a) The land tends to increase its value
b) The land is a hedge against the inflation

In the case of Brazil, both premises have been accomplished. According to Visser’s typology (Visser,
2016), the process of land becoming a financial asset requires that the intended resource has some
features: potential for a profit, liquidity, scarcity of the resource, standardization of the resource and
legitimacy of the object. Visser foresees that the financialization will no longer persist without a base
in the real world, namely without the abstraction of the real production. As Langworthy (Langworthy,
1905) stated: the financial system never really gets in contact with material things, their subject-matter
of daily negotiations is entirely immaterial; namely, they never get in touch with real commodities.

Part III. Analysis and conclusions

IR should consider studying the massive large land acquisitions due to the relevance for the discipline.
The large land acquisitions made by large financial corporations or large agribusiness corporations

18
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/americas/tiaa-cref-us-investment-giant-accused-of-land-grabs-
in-brazil.html?_r=0

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have diverse consequences for the integrity and the wholeness of the State’s territory. This research
is still an ongoing process. The main purpose from this paper is about explaining the new
configuration of power (new geographies of power) generated by large financial corporations
(pension funds) due to the large and massive acquisition of land, in foreign developing countries with
huge natural resources.

As said previously with the expansion of the globalization and the upsurge of technology and
communications, there have been important shifts in the interstate system, giving place to the
emergence of new and powerful actors to fill the spaces of power that the State seems to have
transferred in some way to private sector. Some scholars called it the State’s diffusion or retreat of
the State (Strange, 1995). Now, twenty years later than S. Strange’s context (1996), there is a whole
new and broader scope. What comes up as a question is: how did the financial system end up
assimilating and operationalizing the entire primary sector (agriculture, mining, metals, food and
lately land) as part of its speculative business and getting such a power?

First, the main risks that financial firms put into the land are three issues:
1) The nexus State-High finances in which the State (developing countries) is pressured mostly.
2) The use of highly risky vehicles or mechanisms of financial investment where natural resources
(land), or agricultural production are at stake
3) The financial breakdown in future agricultural commodities, mostly when they have a direct impact
on society’s food prices
4) the domestic and local agenda – setting which entails a risk for the local authorities when the large
corporation pervades the local rules of decision making.

Second, the emerged global financial system in 1980’s, after Bretton Woods fall, left what S. Sassen
stated as an unclearly defined institutional space (Sassen S. , 2012), which incorporates a whole set
of networked alliances that give rise to the consolidation of private authorities that support the trade
and financial system on one side, but on the other side, it increases the social risks and costs due to
the interplays among private actors, mostly when they are acquiring and controlling large amounts of
natural resources or vast tracts of land in foreign developing countries.

There are two main concerns regarding the massive land acquisitions: a) the acquisition and
privatization of land (territory) could give place to hyper-control of a foreign land and its natural
resources (private territoriality) and b) the upsurge of private authorities that support the massive

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acquisitions and privatization of foreign land. Up to this moment, State is still the main source of
authority, a diffused or defective or corrupted authority, but at last the main authority so far which
can intervene to keep the control of resources for the local society, not to dispossess them from land.

Also, one of the turning points about the phenomenon of the massive land acquisition by large
multinational financial firms is that territory under the sovereign jurisdiction of the State has a specific
meaning and purpose, even inside the most decadent State. On the other hand, when the land of a
territory is under the dominion and authority of the transnational and domestic private sector, the
meaning and purpose turns itself and changes dramatically into a commercial issue which takes out
the traditional values that it used to have.

The question in turn: Are we witnessing the emergence of private ruling-type with the control of the
whole resources? As most of the sectors of the economy, primary sector has been under massive
pressure to attend the high demand of a big global population; but also, farmland it’s been under the
financial pressure since the staple food prices are set in the stock market. Under such as state of
affairs, the problem is not about that a financial corporation buys massive tracts of land, but it’s about
the concentration of power, the control of resources in the hands of TNC alliances, and the expansion
of the private authority due to the fragmentation of State’s authority.

The corporate social responsibility from multinational corporations and financial corporation rests in
the self-regulated free market, and it is based on the establishment of the soft law inside of the
domestic legal framework of the States. The soft law is just about a type of lax regulation or self-
regulation for the market. Also, the issue of the private authority is altering the geography of global
power. Power has a direct relation to authority. Usually, State power and authority has been
concentrated in the entity of the modern State.

This concentration of power and authority along with the legitimated means of coercion –violence-
and capacity to create legal frameworks gives the idea why the State has been the central agent in the
interstate system. Its agency has been legitimated by its society. In the other hand, the legitimacy of
private sector authority is recognized and legitimated by the international networked circuits of
international trade and financial organizations (IMF, WBG), private financial institutions,
international commercial institutions (WTO, OCDE), and even by the State in the domestic realm.

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When analyzing the private authority and its gathered authority and power through global private
sector there are different ways to enforce the private normativity or private law: the economic
sanctions. If we analyze the circumstances of a State when requesting an international line of credit,
if the debtor does not pay the undertaken duties, the debtor is being drastically cut back or canceled
from its credit line and it’s not allowed to get access to the international credit markets until the debt
is not negotiated. This is a clear line of private power on top of the State.

As earlier mentioned, the modern sovereign State and its legal framework in which the sovereignty,
territoriality and authority lie, has been built since Westphalian treaty. Nevertheless, the neoliberal
paradigm evolved along with globalization processes since 80’s decade. Current globalization and
novel technology have fostered sharply the transformation of the state system through the global
governance processes where the private players have a wide influence and participation. Does it mean
the State’s agency is fading away? No, but the economic and financial process that pervades the
authority of the State through the large massive land investments, are creating a hole in the State
international position, namely, State is not losing agency, but its central position it’s been challenged
in the global arena.

Finally, economic globalization is engendering new economic and political structures for the
legitimacy of private global actors, and institutions. So, financial system, its institutions, and large
corporations are gaining spaces of power vis-à-vis the State, due to the use of sophisticated
mechanisms and tools that financialize the social practices and traditions of society to obtain larger
profits and benefit within the financial markets with the seeming State approval. Nevertheless, society
might not be able to understand these financialized processes and mechanisms, but when it comes to
existing real risks and high costs in people’s life and land, there might not exist such as a complex
mechanism that avoids the social opposition and resistance from society.

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