Corporate Power and Multistakeholderism: Redefining the Circular Economy in Global Plastic Governance

This article examines the transformation of the ‘circular economy’ paradigm within global plastic governance, focusing on how diverse social forces have reshaped its trajectory through multistakeholder mechanisms. While the circular economy has been widely lauded as a transformative approach to sustainable resource utilisation, it is increasingly aligned with corporate agendas in mainstream discourse: a reinterpretation that emphasises recycling, reuse, and individual responsibility, while diverting focus from regulating and reducing plastic production. Using Gramscian analytics, we examine contestation over and reinterpretation of the circular economy, highlighting how corporations ——and attendant social forces— enact political strategies and have been able to exert significant influence over the circular economy agenda through multistakeholder mechanisms. Multistakeholder partnerships, often framed and praised as collaborative and inclusive problem-solving platforms, thus constitute battlegrounds for agenda-setting and vehicles for corporate dominance, with significant political and substantive ramifications for global environmental policy. We empirically investigate the roles and strategies of different social forces in shaping the circular economy for plastics, analysing key empirical junctures including the UNEP’s ongoing deliberations for a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. By empirically tracing the paradigm's evolution, interviews with stakeholders, and observations at events, we unpack the dynamics between corporate power, multistakeholderism, and environmental governance, challenging the neutrality and effectiveness of multistakeholderism in realising transformative sustainable agendas.