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The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

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The Extractive Industries and Society
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/exis

Original article

Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged
timber: Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign
accountability
Lena Partzsch, PD, Dr.a,* , Martijn C. Vlaskamp, Dr.b,c,1,2
a
Sustainability Governance, Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg, Tennenbacher Strasse 4, 79106 Freiburg,
Germany
b
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), Spain
c
The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:
Received 18 May 2016
Received in revised form 12 July 2016
Accepted 12 July 2016
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Accountability
Conflict
Minerals
Norm diffusion
Norm entrepreneur
Timber

A B S T R A C T

The European Union, the United States, and a number of other state actors have adopted policies obliging
companies to conduct supply chain due diligence regarding the import of natural resources. While
several authors have analyzed the motives of these measures individually, this article provides a broader
explanation for their diffusion. In empirical terms, it focuses on ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged
timber.
Building on the classical norm life cycle, the article’s argument is threefold. Firstly, it argues that these
mandatory due diligence policies are the result of a new foreign accountability norm concerning the
conditions under which natural resources are extracted. Secondly, it shows that the emergence of this
norm is the result of strategic framing, in particular by moral entrepreneurs. International NGOs have
successfully advocated the foreign accountability norm by placing it within already existing free market
norms, instead of provoking open confrontation. Thirdly, in addition to the classical norm life cycle, the
article shows that agency has also played a crucial role in the current phase of norm cascade. ‘Fair
business’ entrepreneurs benefit from new markets for certified products, such as ‘conflict free’ phones,
and their marketing enhances the norm cascade.
ã 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
During the past decade, the European Union (EU), the United
States, and a number of other state actors have adopted policies
that oblige companies to conduct supply chain due diligence2
concerning the origins of the natural resources they use (Bartley,
2014; Sarfaty, 2015). These regulations require companies to

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: lena.partzsch@ifp.uni-freiburg.de (L. Partzsch),
mvlaskamp@ibei.org, martijn.vlaskamp@yale.edu (M.C. Vlaskamp).
1
http://www.martijnvlaskamp.eu.
2
Current address: Yale University, MacMillan Center for International and Area
Studies, Henry R. Luce Hall / 34, Hillhouse Ave / New Haven, CT 06511, United States.
2
The US Lacey Act defines due care as “that degree of care which a reasonably
prudent person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances”. The EU
Timber Regulation and the US Dodd-Frank Act section 1502 demand due diligence
which requires the fulfillment of specific standards in order to meet the required
due care (Leipold and Winkel 2016). For the sake of simplicity, ‘due diligence’ will be
used as an umbrella term to cover the two methods of ensuring foreign
accountability.

conduct an ongoing, proactive, and reactive checking process in
their supply chain in order to identify and manage the risk of
contributing, directly or indirectly, to social and/or environmental
harm (OECD, 2013; p. 13). As a result, companies are increasingly
held morally, politically and legally accountable for their activities,
or those of their suppliers, abroad. In some cases, these regulations
are used to persecute enterprises for their connection to illegal
activities, while in other cases these requirements only aim on
permitting consumers to make informed decisions about their
purchases. This new global foreign accountability norm, which
connects the behavior of extractive industries with societal
concerns, triggered off the puzzles that motivate this article:
How did this new norm emerge and how can we explain the
current diffusion? We focus on the two areas of ‘conflict minerals’
and illegally logged timber and the role of ‘norm entrepreneurs’,
i.e. individual or collective agents who drive norm and policy
change (Partzsch, 2015). In both areas, companies face legal
obligations to disclose information about their practices abroad
when importing to the EU (timber and soon minerals) and the
United States (timber and minerals).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003
2214-790X/ã 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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Requirements for disclosure can be seen as a response to an
international environment in which the free trade norm dominates. Norms are understood as appropriate behavior in the
international community (Björkdahl, 2009). In institutional terms,
the free trade norm was fundamental to the establishment of the
World Trade Organization (WTO), which enforces the unlimited
exchange of goods between countries, without controlling any
adherence to human rights or environmental standards abroad
(Gabler, 2010). Due to this situation, multinational companies may
often be involved in harmful practices abroad with impunity in the
countries of production and of consumption. For example, the case
of Shell in Nigeria gained a lot of attention. The multinational oil
company was not held liable for human-rights violations and the
devastation of the Ogoni people's lands through massive oil spills
(Kohl 2014). This lack of legal foreign accountability has long been
criticized by scholars of global governance (Grant and Keohane,
2005; Sachs and Santarius, 2005; Simons and Macklin, 2013).
Mandatory due diligence requirements have now become a
central answer to this global governance gap by imposing
transparency standards that permit holding companies legally
accountable for their activities abroad (Bartley, 2014; Douma and
van der Velde, 2016; Radley and Vogel, 2015). While discourses on
foreign accountability are not of recent origin and the rapid
adoption and spread of voluntary certification over the last two
decades have already reflected a new moral commitment (Dashwood, 2007; Gillies, 2010; McHenrya et al., 2015; Sydow, 2016), we
argue that the adoption of mandatory requirements have been a
quantum leap and demonstrate the emergence of a new norm.
Whereas the background and development of the regulations on
‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber have received
substantial attention (Bartley, 2014; Gillies, 2010; Haufler, 2010;
Radley and Vogel, 2015; Wanvik, 2016; Young, 2015) and there
have been at least a few legal studies comparing the two areas of
timber and minerals (Douma and van der Velde, 2016; Sarfaty,
2015), this paper’s original contribution is to ask how the foreign
accountability norm has emerged and been diffused by comparing
the two areas. To us, this norm is expressed by the fact or condition
of companies being legally required to disclosure information that
allows holding them accountable for socially and/or environmentally harmful practices regarding natural extraction in their supply
chain abroad (for the sake of readability we will refer to this norm
in the remainder of the article only as ‘foreign accountability
norm’).
The two selected empirical cases, ‘conflict minerals’ and
illegally logged timber, are the only areas in which this norm so
far has been translated in mandatory due diligence requirements
for global supply chains. In the area of ‘conflict minerals’, the
activities are mainly motivated by their role as a source of income
for criminal and armed groups in the ongoing conflict in the
eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (Kim, 2015;
Radley and Vogel, 2015; Young, 2015). In order to stop this trade,
section 1502 of the 2010 US Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) obliges companies to
conduct due diligence when placing minerals from the DRC or
neighboring countries (US Congress, 2010). The EU agreed upon a
similar regulation in June 2016 (Council of the European Union,
2016).
In the field of timber, most measures target illegally logged
timber, which is often linked to social and environmental
problems, such as deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Studies
have estimated the share of illegally logged timber on the world
market in 2009 at between 7 and 17 percent (Dieter et al., 2012). In
order to tackle this issue, the 2008 US Legal Timber Protection Act
(LTPT), the 2010 European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) and the
2012 Australian Illegal Logging Prohibition Act (AILPA) require
companies to make sure that they only import timber or timber

products from legal sources (Leipold et al., 2016). These measures
are no toothless paper tigers, as illustrated by the penalty levied
against US hardwood retailer Lumber Liquidators, which had
imported hardwood flooring from China that had been made with
illegally logged timber from far eastern Russia. The fine of over US$
13 million is, so far, the largest financial penalty for violating the
LTPT (US Department of Justice, 2015).3
Methodologically, we rely on theories regarding norm and
environmental policy diffusion, which we discuss in the first
section of the article. In the article’s second section we elaborate on
the question of how the foreign accountability norm relates to the
international free trade paradigm. The third section compares the
role of moral activists and entrepreneurs in the areas of ‘conflict
minerals’ and illegally logged timber. In the article’s final section
we bring these different aspects together and summarize our
argument. Our empirical findings are based on secondary literature
and document analyses, participation in practitioners meetings
and 32 semi-structured interviews with public officials, and
representatives from businesses and NGOs, from 2013 to 2015.
The contributions of this article are threefold. Firstly, we
demonstrate the establishment of a new global foreign accountability norm with regard to extractive industries and society.
Secondly, we illustrate how the emergence of this norm is the
result of strategic framing, especially by moral activists. International NGOs have successfully promoted the norm by framing it
within the free trade norm instead of provoking an open norm
confrontation. Thirdly, we show that agency is not only important
during the norm emergence phase, but also crucial during the
current phase of norm cascade. In particular, ‘fair business’
entrepreneurs are benefitting from these new markets for
socially/environmentally responsible products, such as ‘fair’
phones, and their marketing contributes to further norm diffusion.
2. The norm life cycle and the new foreign accountability norm
One of the best-known models of international norm change is
Finnemore and Sikkink’s Norm Life Cycle (1998). In their seminal
article, they use this circular model to explain how norms
themselves change, and how they change other features of the
political landscape. Their model includes processes of strategic
social construction, in which actors strategize rationally to
reconfigure preferences, identities, or social context (Finnemore
and Sikkink, 1998; Partzsch, 2015). As our article discusses how the
foreign accountability norm has entered the international system
and has been converted into concrete policies with a particular
focus on norm entrepreneurship, this model is a useful start for our
analysis.
The Norm Life Cycle consists of three phases: (1) norm
emergence, (2) norm cascade and (3) norm internalization. In
the first phase, norm emergence, agency plays a significant role.
New norms never enter a normative vacuum but, instead, emerge
in a highly contested normative space, where they must compete
with other perceptions of what is considered appropriate behavior
(Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Florini, 1996). Therefore, in the
phase of norm emergence, norm entrepreneurs need to call
attention to or even create issues, in a sense of framing, using
language that names, interprets and dramatizes: “Norms do not
appear out of thin air; they are actively built by agents having
strong notions about appropriate or desirable behavior in their
community” (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; pp. 896–897).
When scholars examine norm change, they look at legal change
in the final analysis. For example, Finnemore and Sikkink illustrate

3
Lumber Liquidators had a gross profit of US$ 279 million and a net (loss) income
of US$ 56 million in 2015, see Lumber Liquidators (2016, p. 50).

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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this with the case of the Ottawa Treaty to ban anti-personnel land
mines, which made compliance with this new norm of warfare
mandatory for the signatory states (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998).
Thus, norm entrepreneurs are always simultaneously policy
entrepreneurs, who seek to convince a critical mass of states
(norm leaders) to embrace the promoted norms by enacting them
as legislation. In other words: Norm change has a moral, political
and legal dimension. With respect to the foreign accountability
norm, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Humans Rights
(UN, 2011) may be considered the final breakthrough at the
international level. Further, we consider the adoption of the DoddFrank Act, in the area of ‘conflict minerals’, as the point at which the
persuasion process successfully concluded and the United States
became a norm leader. The US legislation obliges companies
registered by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to file
an annual report if they use tantalum, tin, tungsten, or gold (3TG)
from the DRC or any of the nine adjoining countries in their
products (US Congress, 2010). These companies are not explicitly
prohibited from using potential ‘conflict minerals’, but are required
to conduct due diligence in their reports to assess whether the
minerals used are ‘conflict-free’ or not. In the area of timber, the
adoption of AILPA, EUTR and LTPT made Australia, the EU, and the
United States the norm leaders, as these legislations explicitly
prohibit the import and use of illegally logged timber. In addition,
this prohibition by the LTPT also obliges those involved with the
production and sale of wood products to undertake ‘due care’ to
avoid importing illegal wood products (Cashore and Stone, 2014).
Likewise, the EUTR makes it mandatory for operators to conduct
due diligence to avoid importing illegally logged timber (Leipold
and Winkel, 2016). In Australia, importers and domestic processors
are required to have a due diligence system in place to minimize
the risk of importing or processing illegally logged timber (Brack
et al., 2012).
For Finnemore and Sikkink, norm entrepreneurs are individuals
who act beyond nation-state borders to provoke disruptive policy
change (see also Partzsch 2015). However, they require some kind
of organizational platform from and through which they can push
for a new norm (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). Other scholars have
also considered collective actors as norm entrepreneurs, such as
NGO coalitions (Björkdahl, 2009). Therefore in this article, when
we look at norm entrepreneurs in section four, we will consider
individual as well as collective agents.
In the second phase of the Norm Life Cycle, norm cascade, states
that have been convinced need to persuade additional states. For
this phase, Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) use the term of
‘contagion’ to describe what occurs among states, meaning that
international or regional demonstration effects become more
important than domestic dynamics for effecting norm change.
Empirical studies suggest that one-third of the total states in the
system must accept a norm in order to ‘tip’ the process (Finnemore
and Sikkink, 1998).
With regard to environmental policies, scholars have identified
two contradictory dynamics that also offer two alternative
explanations for diffusion (Özler and Obach, 2009; Simmons
and Elkins, 2004). The first dynamic is the so-called ‘Delaware
effect’, which is named after the US state with the lowest corporate
taxes. According to this assumption, due to capitalist norms, such
as the promotion of free trade, states seek to gain economic
competiveness by having lower environmental and social standards than their peers. As all states follow this logic, there is a ‘race
to the bottom’, and a continuous lowering of protection standards
(Özler and Obach, 2009). The alternative dynamic is the ‘California
effect’, whose name is inspired by the state’s 1970 Clean Air Act
(Vogel, 1995). As California was by far the largest US market for
new cars, the entire US automobile industry had to comply with
the state’s (higher) standards. Being a pioneer state, such as

3

California, can also provide first mover advantages for the domestic
industry, as it obliges them to an earlier implementation of
standards that will be required elsewhere at a later date (Jänicke,
2005). In consequence, we can observe both a regulative ‘race to
the top’ and a respective policy diffusion, in particular with regards
to environmental norms (Cashore and Stone, 2014; Holzinger,
2007).
During the phase of norm cascade, it also matters which states
adopt the norm, as not all of them are equally critical for its
diffusion (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). ‘Market power’ makes the
EU (and the United States) critical states and potential norm
leaders (Damro, 2012). Once critical states adopt mandatory due
diligence requirements, other states may follow. The EU agreement
on ‘conflict minerals’ as well as the Chinese guidelines on timber
and minerals may be crucial in this regard. One motive is
‘socialization’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998) and another is based
on economics (Vogel, 1997): without being able to provide the
required information regarding the origin of the natural resources
used, states may lose access to the critical state’s market. However,
the adoption of norms during the norm cascade almost never
happens without domestic pressure from groups, such as NGOs,
industry groups or bureaucracies, as an emerging norm always
needs to compete and stand up to other established norms (Risse
et al., 1999). For this reason, new norms need to be translated, then
reinterpreted and modified in a local context (Lessa and Payne,
2012; Zimmermann, 2012). This process is not a linear and may
include serious setbacks (Risse et al., 1999).
Although there is some controversy about the Dodd-Frank Act
(Arikan et al., 2015; Radley and Vogel, 2015) and the implementation of LTPA and EUTR (McDermott et al., 2015; Springate-Baginski
et al., 2014), in the two areas of minerals and forestry, we can
currently observe a diffusion and enhancement of foreign
accountability policies. The most noteworthy follow-up to the
Dodd-Frank Act is the fast spread of the OECD Due Diligence
Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from ConflictAffected and High-Risk Areas (first edition 2011). Businesses, NGOs
and a large number of states have worked together on this
Guidance, which gives very detailed instructions on how to act as
an extraction company to mitigate the risk of buying ‘conflict
minerals’ (OECD, 2013). The OECD Due Diligence Guidance
incorporates a five-step risk-based due diligence procedure. These
recommendations are voluntary and non-binding in nature, but
are generally seen as a benchmark for complying with foreign
accountability requirements. Besides serving as a formula for the
implementation of the US Dodd-Frank Act (2012), the OECD Due
Diligence Guidance has served as a blueprint for the formulation of
further draft regulations on ‘conflict minerals’ in Canada (Canadian
Parliament, 2013) and the EU (Council of the European Union,
2016; Silná and Kittová, 2014), and for official guidelines in
Australia, China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (Australian
Government, 2015; OECD, 2015). Furthermore, on part of the
affected (exporting) countries, the International Conference on the
Great Lakes Region, with twelve African Member States, has also
set up a Mineral Tracking and Certification Scheme based on these
standards (ICGLR, 2015). While these schemes are often considered
to have little or no impact on the ground,4 Congolese authorities
suspended two Chinese companies from trading minerals in 2012
on the basis of these schemes (Pickles, 2012).
To comply with these provisions, the Dodd-Frank Act has also
stimulated the emergence of public-private initiatives and the
creation of voluntary certification systems, such as the US PublicPrivate Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade (PPA) and the

4
Authors’ interview with official at Belgian Federal Service of Foreign Affairs,
Brussels, November 25, 2013

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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Conflict Free Smelter Program (CFS) (Hofmann et al., 2015;
Manhart and Schleicher, 2013; Young, 2015). Mineral companies
such as Placer Dome and Noranda had been actively seeking to
improve their environmental and social practices through corporate social responsibility measures at the firm level before
(Dashwood, 2007; Sydow, 2016). As a result of the "market pull"
from the electronic industry, jewelers and other manufacturers for
"conflict-free" minerals, these new private initiatives are not
restricted to the firm-level or to particular conflict regions
anymore (Airike et al., 2016; Hofmann et al., 2015; Young, 2015).
In 2012, the Dutch government started the Conflict-Free Tin
Initiative (CFTI), similar to the PPA, with almost all the same
companies and NGOs. CFTI finances ‘best practice’ downstream
suppliers, i.e. mines in DRC and Malaysia. The aim of this initiative
is to develop mechanisms that systematically support companies
that comply with responsible sourcing standards (CFTI, 2016; US
Government, 2015).
In the area of forestry, voluntary sector-wide initiatives
preceded mandatory due diligence requirements. The Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) was already founded in 1993 and the
Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) was
established in 1999 to promote sustainable management of the
world’s forests. These initiatives did not accomplish a norm change
regarding foreign accountability (Bartley, 2003; Chan and Pattberg,
2008). In reaction to the LTPA and EUTR, however, even China, one
of the largest laggards in this field, has “made considerable
progress towards tackling the trade in illegal timber” (Wellesley,
2014, 22) and, amongst other measures, is working on a national
timber legality verification system. Another indicator of ‘contagion’ is the growing interest of producing states in Voluntary
Partnership Agreements (VPAs) with the EU to improve their
forestry governance: Before the EUTR, only six states were
negotiating such agreements with Brussels; now negotiations
with nine further countries have been opened, and talks with
eleven additional states are in preparation (EU Flegt Facility, 2016).
The second phase of norm cascade concludes at the stage where
norms are internalized by all actors and achieve a taken-forgranted quality. In the third phase of the Norm Life Cycle, norm
internalization, norms are considered ‘normal’ and norm conformance is evident (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998, p. 900). This does
not mean that nobody acts against the norm, however, the
international community stigmatizes the violation of these norms
as inappropriate behavior. Once the foreign accountability norm
has reached this ‘taken-for-granted’ stage, it becomes self-evident
that information regarding supply chains is completely transparent. However, so far this phase has not been reached as a number of
‘critical states’ do not embrace this norm yet.
3. Fitting the foreign accountability norm in the established
norm environment
Emerging norms are never merely new, as they must resonate
with the broader public understanding of what is considered
appropriate behavior (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998, pp. 896–897).
In the international norm environment, we mostly observe
incremental change accompanied by continuous norm conflicts
(Panke and Petersohn, 2016). This section discusses how norm
entrepreneurs, who intend to promote the foreign accountability
norm for extractive industries and society, have made this norm fit
into the established international norm environment. More
specifically, it explains how they have framed it in a manner that
would avoid conflict with the dominating paradigms of the
Washington Consensus, such as free trade.
Since its establishment, the WTO has rigorously enforced these
paradigms in its dispute-settling decisions, and neither the UN nor
NGOs have been able to promote the prioritization of alternative

environmental and human-rights norms (Bartley, 2003; Gabler,
2010). Furthermore, measures that require compliance with
certain social and environmental standards have also been
interpreted by the global South as a form of hidden protectionism
(Biermann, 2001). For example, mandatory due diligence requirements in global supply chains may protect domestic industries in
the global North from potentially harmfully processed, but also
less expensive, imports from the global South (Fishman and
Obidzinski, 2014; Smillie, 2013). However, the recent precedents of
the Tuna II-case may have paved the way for measures that
influence free trade on the grounds of animal welfare or labor
rights (Jakir, 2013). The WTO has acknowledged in its rulings that
Member States can implement ‘technical regulations’, such as the
‘dolphin safe’ label for tuna products, as long as they do not
discriminate against products with a different country of origin, or
form an unnecessary obstacle to free trade (WTO, 2015).
In the area of timber, the legislations in Australia, the EU and the
United States make companies accountable for the legal origin of
timber and timber products they import to these markets. The
choice of the focus on legality, and not on more conceptually vague
terms, such as ‘sustainability’ or ‘environmental-friendliness’, was
made to avoid problems with WTO rules.5 Legality is a clearly
defined term and, consequently, a recent Chatham House report
concluded that, despite any legal precedents, ’there are good
reasons for thinking that trade measures taken against illegal
timber can be compatible with WTO rules’ (Brack et al., 2012).
The situation is somewhat different in the area of ‘conflict’
minerals. The Dodd-Frank Act and the OECD Due Diligence
Guidance aim for conflict-free supply chains, which is a more
vague term as there is no universally accepted definition of
‘conflict’ (see also Ille, 2016). A broader understanding of ‘conflict’
could include not only armed conflicts in other parts of the world,
but also social and environmental conflicts related to natural
resource exploitation.6 Which resources can be considered
‘conflict-free’ or not, was therefore a contentious issue in the
negotiations of new EU regulation.7 A focus on legality is less
controversial, however it depends on the exact definition of the
term ‘conflict’ to determine whether it covers more or less
resources than a focus on conflict-free production does.
According to the US legislation, ‘conflict minerals’ are 3TG
minerals or “any other mineral or its derivatives determined by the
Secretary of State to be financing conflict in the DRC or an adjoining
country” (US Congress, 2010). This narrow definition ensures that
the measure can be justified with existing UN-sanctions against
“(i)ndividuals or entities supporting the illegal armed groups in the
eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo through illicit
trade of natural resources” (UN Security Council, 2008). Article XXI
of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), on security
exceptions, states explicitly that “nothing in that agreement shall
be construed ( . . . ) to prevent any contracting party from taking
any action in pursuance of its obligations under the United Nations
Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security” (
WTO, 2016). These measures can therefore be justified as a tool to
comply with UN-sanctions. The EU Conflict Minerals Regulation is
not limited in scope to the Great Lakes Region, but for this reason,
WTO rules are also no longer an issue.8 Moreover, it is important to
keep in mind that there is no explicit prohibition on the import of
‘conflict minerals’ to the United States, only an obligation to

5

Authors’ interview with EU Official, Brussels, November 7, 2013.
Authors’ interview with European External Action Service, Brussels, November
5, 2013.
7
Author’s interview with NGO representative 1, Freiburg, September 28, 2015.
8
Author’s interview with NGO representative 2, by phone, October 9, 2015;
author’s interview with NGO representative 3, by phone, November 3, 2015.
6

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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execute due diligence and to disclose the origins of the minerals
used (Kim, 2015).
The innovation of mandatory due diligence lies in the fact that
companies can be held accountable for socially and environmentally harmful behavior committed by other actors at an earlier
stage of the supply chain (Sarfaty, 2015). In the area of timber, it
serves as a tool to detect illegal activities abroad and to discourage
these by closing significant end markets for related products. The
US measures against ‘conflict minerals’ work, as in the case of the
tuna label, as a nudge: the expectation is that consumers will shy
away from products which cannot guarantee that they have not
contributed to war funding. Even in cases in which no laws have
been broken, due diligence requirements create an additional
incentive for companies to take the social and environmental
conditions under which their natural resources have been
extracted into account, due to possible consumer backlash and
damages to their reputation. As a reaction, industries need to
create mechanisms that guarantee transparency in their supply
chains and isolate perpetrators of undesirable behavior.
In summary, these policies do not challenge the free-trade
paradigm, but use “disclosure as governance” (Haufler, 2010): the
power remains with the ‘markets’ and consumers, but states seek
to steer their behavior toward a certain direction (Gabler, 2010;
Jakir, 2013). By influencing multinational companies and host
governments, mandatory due diligence requirements are expected
to provide an answer to the ‘global governance gap’ and
structurally transform global politics.
4. The role of norm entrepreneurs
This section will analyze in more detail the role of norm
entrepreneurs in the emergence of the foreign accountability norm
in the areas of ‘conflict minerals’ and ‘illegally logged timber’.
Following this, the section will discuss the recent developments
toward the ‘tipping point’ that prelude a norm cascade. In both
cases a critical mass has not yet been achieved, although policy
decisions in different places indicate a broader diffusion of that
norm.
4.1. ‘Conflict’ minerals and deforestation: creating foreign
accountability
In the area of ‘conflict minerals’, if we ask for a state that was
pioneering foreign accountability, we can identify the United
States as a norm leader due the adoption of the Dodd-Frank Act.
The provisions of section 1502 not only affect 6000 companies
directly (including numerous non-US corporations that are SECregistered), they also have an effect on their suppliers from the
United States and overseas (Sarfaty, 2015, pp. 19–23). Furthermore,
California and Maryland have strengthened the provisions of
Dodd-Frank by prohibiting units of state government from
entering into contract with a company that fails to comply with
these federal regulations (Sarfaty, 2015, pp. 20–21).
An understanding of the area of ‘conflict minerals’ requires a
review of the issue of ‘blood diamonds’ during the 1990s and
2000s. Global Witness founders Charmian Gooch, Patrick Alley and
Simon Taylor were crucial individual norm entrepreneurs in
issuing links between natural resources, international trade and
armed conflict. They met on a research trip to Cambodia while
working for an environmental NGO. During their investigations on
deforestation, they realized that the Khmer Rouge was financing
their weapons through international sales of timber (Global
Witness, 1995; Skoll Foundation, 2016). While Global Witness’
first campaigns on ‘conflict timber’ had only a limited effect, its
activities against ‘blood diamonds’ were much more successful. Its
reports revealed how gems contributed to the civil wars in Angola

5

and Sierra Leone, and how existing UN sanctions on rough
diamonds without a government certificate were being structurally violated (Global Witness, 1998, 2000). These findings were
subsequently corroborated by reports to the UN Security Council
Sanction Committees on Angola and Sierra Leone that named
companies, weapon dealers, and even heads of state (the
presidents of Togo and Burkina Faso) for their continued
involvement in trafficking diamonds and weapons (Mollander,
2000).
In response to the UN reports, the Kimberley Process
Certification Scheme (KPCS) was set up as the first scheme
throughout industry (Smillie, 2013). The KPCS resulted from a
multi-stakeholder process initiated by South Africa. Since 2003,
the KPCS requires all participating states to issue certificates for
extracted rough diamonds that declare that they have not
contributed to the financing of rebel groups and only permits
the trade in gems that comply with this requisite. Higher
transparency and a tracking system shall hinder rebels from
leaking money for arms sells and corruption (Kehl, 2010). 81 states
signed the agreements, and member states agreed that they would
not trade with non-members (Smillie, 2013).
The UK government started a more comprehensive but
voluntary initiative in the same year the KPCS was set up: the
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI, 2016). EITI is a
global standard to promote open and accountable management of
natural resources. The initial group of participants included 20
governments (including the United States and major EU members,
such as France and Germany), 18 companies, three industry
associations, dozens of NGOs, a number of international organizations, and a statement of support by over 40 institutional investors.
EITI members disclose information on tax payments, licenses,
contracts, production and other key elements around resource
extraction in annual reports. It was intended from the very
beginning to be a voluntary program (Gillies, 2010; Haufler, 2010).
For a long time, many companies and importing states were
hiding behind deliberate indifference with respect to the origins of
diamonds and minerals. While norm entrepreneur Global Witness
brought into question the effectiveness of the Kimberly process
because of insufficient enforcement mechanisms and pulled out of
the scheme in 2011, the creation of the KPCS established the norm
that these actors could also be held legally accountable for the
conditions under which a natural resource had been extracted
abroad (Smillie, 2013). In other words, due to the case of ‘blood
diamonds’, norm entrepreneurs could refer to the foreign
accountability norm while campaigning against ‘conflict minerals’
from the Great Lakes Region.
Just as in the case of ‘blood diamonds’, Global Witness is playing
an important role in creating awareness for the issue of ‘conflict
minerals’. In the United States, the NGO coordinated its activities
with the domestic NGO Enough Project. Launched in 2007 by the
influential and progressive think-tank Center for American
Progress, one of Enough Project’s priorities is the issue of the
DRC and the role of ‘conflict minerals’ in the ongoing conflict in the
country’s east (Ille, 2016; Radley and Vogel, 2015). The moral
activists suggested that cell phone and computer producers had to
be held accountable for ongoing conflict in the country’s east, as
they were using ‘conflict minerals’ in their products. In particular,
the campaign ‘Raise Hope for Congo’ was carried out in a highly
professional manner, using a range of celebrities, such as George
Clooney and Angelina Jolie, in order to catch the attention of the
media (Collins, 2013). Being connected to the Center for American
Progress, the Enough Project possessed, in addition to a powerful
narrative, the required political contacts to lobby effectively for the
inclusion of section 1502 in the Dodd-Frank Act (Custers, 2013).
The norm entrepreneurs in the United States built on the existing
norm that companies should carry some responsibility for the

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

4.2. Explaining the diffusion of the foreign accountability norm

(European Parliament 2010). The OECD Due Diligence Guidance
further added momentum for similar legislation in the EU.9 Trade
Commissioner Karel de Gucht took a significant lead in this, in part
due to his personal interest – as a Belgian national – in the DRC.10
As he publically explained “We (Europe) have acted before on
diamonds and forest products. There is no principled reason why
we cannot do so again here” (De Gucht, 2013). In Canada, Dewar
(2014), sponsor of the Conflict Minerals Act, stated that “This is
about doing something that the Americans have done; and it is
being done, implemented, and looked at in the European Union.
This is just a matter of our getting in line”. While NGOs in both
places were somewhat surprised by the developments in the
United States, they soon tried to capitalize on this momentum by
creating a critical mass for similar legislation.11
In addition to this ‘contagion’, further diffusion was also
motivated by the ‘California effect’. According to the estimates of
the European Commission, between 150,000 and 200,000
European companies have been affected by the Dodd-Frank Act
(European Commission, 2014). This means that up to 17 per cent of
European companies working with 3TG are obliged to take heed of
these measures because they supply US customers (European
Commission, 2014). For example, Philips, one of the world’s largest
electronics groups, headquartered in Amsterdam, realized that it
had to comply with these US regulations in any case: “At Philips we
have around ten thousand direct suppliers. ( . . . ) Most of them do
use some of these metals, and this means you’re supposed to ask
every supplier to prove whether their products contain minerals
from the Congo” (Theeuwes cited in Muambi, 2014, p. 2). The
European industry asked the European Commission for assistance,
as they feared that US companies may “seek and switch to other
suppliers that are better able to trace back the source of the
minerals used” (European Commission, 2014).12 This argument
played a smaller role in Canada, as most major global Canadian
companies are SEC-registered anyway, and therefore subject to the
provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act. However, similar considerations
were, for example, an important incentive for the Chinese Chamber
of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemical Importers &
Exporters, which is supervised by the Ministry of Commerce, to
develop mineral supply guidelines for its more than 6200
members (Brühlhart Banyiyezako, 2015).
In the area of forestry, timber exporting countries lose access to
important markets if they cannot provide the required legality
documentation. In the case of the EU, an important provision of the
EUTR states that a VPA is a green lane for compliance with the
required due diligence standards (EU Flegt Facility, 2016). This
provision created a strong economic incentive for a number of
timber exporting states to open negotiations with Brussels,
confirming the California Effect.
During this phase of further norm diffusion non-state actors are
also taking agency. As a result of the Dutch government’s Conflict
Free Tin Initiative, in 2013, Boukje Theeuwes, Supply Chain
Sustainability Manager of Philips, arranged the production of
fluorescent lamps containing Congolese ‘conflict-free’ tin, and Bas
van Abel founded the Fairphone company in Amsterdam. Fairphone aims to develop a cell phone that does not contain any
'conflict minerals' and that ensures fair labor conditions for the
workforce along the supply chain.13 ‘Fair business’ entrepreneurs

According to Finnemore’s and Sikkink’s norm cycle, persuaded
states become ‘norm leaders’ and start to convince other states,
which leads toward a norm cascade. To some extent, the
developments in the area of ‘conflict minerals’ support their
argument that international and regional demonstration effects
are also playing an important role in the further diffusion of a
norm. The European Parliament welcomed the Dodd-Frank Act and
explicitly requested “a legislative initiative along these lines”

9
Author’s interview with EU Official, Brussels, November 7, 2013 (Belgium had
colonial control over Belgian Congo (now DRC) between 1885 and 1960).
10
Author’s interview with Member of European Parliament, Brussels, November
13, 2013.
11
Author’s interview with NGO representative 1, by phone, September 28, 2015.
12
Author’s interview with business representative 1, by phone, November 20,
2015.
13
Authors’ interview with NGO representative 1, by phone, September 28, 2015.

conditions under which the natural resources they used had been
extracted (Sarfaty, 2015). In their campaigning, they did not openly
confront the procedural requirements with the free-market norm.
As previously described, the current US legislation does not
prohibit ‘conflict minerals’, it only mandates disclosure about the
supply chain. The expectation is that information matters, and that
companies will nevertheless look for ‘conflict-free’ minerals.
Minerals are not the only natural resource that has been linked
to the financing of armed conflicts. Timber is, according to UN
estimates, currently a more lucrative source of income for armed
groups in the DRC compared to 3TG (UNEP-MONUSCO-OSESG,
2015). And yet, the emergence of the foreign accountability norm
in the timber sector has not been driven so much by this aspect, but
rather by the social and environmental harm caused by illegal
logging.
As in the area of ‘conflict’ minerals, it is also helpful to examine
the campaigns in this area that preceded the discussions on illegal
logging. NGOs raised these campaigns in the broader context of
unsustainable logging practices that had caused the massive
destruction of tropical rain forests. During the 1980s, NGOs were
already running effective campaigns in Western Europe and the
United States, in which they encouraged consumers to boycott
tropical wood products (Bartley, 2003). These campaigns put direct
pressure on companies involved in the timber trade, and
contributed to the emergence of private certification systems for
sustainably produced timber, such as FSC and PEFC (Bartley, 2003;
Chan and Pattberg, 2008). While these certification systems are
widely used in North America and Europe, they are still only
sparsely implemented in places with poor forestry governance
(Wasseige et al., 2014). The World Bank, the EU and a number of
other actors (among them environmental NGOs) work on
improving this situation by supporting Forest Law Enforcement
and Governance (FLEG) processes in different regions of the world.
In 2003, the EU set up the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance
and Trade (FLEGT) Action plan, which included the possibility of
VPAs between the EU and third countries to improve forestry
governance in the countries of timber harvest (EU Flegt Facility,
2016).
In parallel to these bi- and multilateral efforts, moral activists
continued their campaigns and found an unlikely ally in parts of
the timber industries. Illegally logged imported timber is often
cheaper than domestic production and therefore causes economic
harm to domestic producers in Australia, the EU and the United
States (Li et al., 2008, p. 448). This situation led to ‘Baptists and
Bootleggers’-coalitions in these three markets, in which advocacy
NGOs and the timber industry favored similar policy outcomes for
different reasons (Bartley, 2014; Leipold and Winkel, 2016).
To summarize the phase of norm emergence for ‘conflict’
minerals and illegally logged timber: In both cases we can see how
norm entrepreneurs, originating from the NGO sectors have
promoted the foreign accountability norm as a way of confronting
a problem arising abroad in places with poor governance records.
In the area of timber, unlike minerals, they allied with domestic
industries, which benefitted economically from import restrictions.

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

benefit from new markets for certified products, and their
marketing raises consumer awareness of problems related to
the international trade in natural resources. Although the second,
and most recent, batch of Fairphones was limited to the rather
moderate number of 35,000 units, the company received a lot of
public attention (e.g. McEachran, 2013) and helped cascade the
foreign accountability norm with regard to the mining sector. By
creating awareness, these companies have achieved that the use of
(voluntary) labels is no longer confined to a niche market of ‘green
enterprises’, but now a “normative obligation” (Kalfagianni, 2015)
for large corporations in ‘sensitive’ markets.
In particular, with regard to ‘conflict-free’ minerals, we find that
while norm entrepreneurship from advocacy NGOs has been
crucial during the first phase of norm emergence, the marketing of
‘fair business’ entrepreneurs is important during the current
phase, in which policies based on the new norm diffuse. Some
companies are actually very aware of their importance for the
further diffusion of this norm and, therefore, even request direct
financial support from European governments for the realization of
‘conflict-free’ sourcing in DRC and other high risk areas.14
The foreign accountability norm is currently in the phase of
cascade. In the field of forestry, scholars have discussed intensely
whether the “re-centering of the state” (Bartley, 2014), in the form
of mandatory requirements, should be considered a step backwards or an improvement, as compared to earlier voluntary
schemes. On the one hand, such voluntary schemes are more
ambitious by certifying sustainability instead of legality. On the
other hand, only a small percentage of timber carries such
certificates, while the binding regulations require legality for all
imports to Australia, the EU and the United States (Bartley, 2014).
Further, Cashore and Stone (2014) argue that these measures
reinforce, rather than detract, from private schemes of sustainability certification. Looking forward, they hypothesize that
mandatory due diligence systems may pave the way for a ‘race
to the top’, a nuanced California effect. However, other scholars
have shown that implementation has so far been dragging behind
these expectations (McDermott et al., 2015; Springate-Baginski
et al., 2014).
In a first reaction to the Dodd-Frank Act, companies refrained
from sourcing minerals in the DRC, and scholars compared this de
facto boycott to sanctions against the country (Manhart and
Schleicher, 2013; Radley and Vogel, 2015; Sarfaty, 2015). President
Kabila suspended artisanal mining activities in Eastern DRC from
September 2010 to March 2011, and this led to a collapse of the
mining industry in these regions (while mining continued
especially in the Katanga region) (Manhart and Schleicher, 2013;
Radley and Vogel, 2015). Economic costs of due diligence,
technological constraints of tracing minerals’ origin, difficulties
of proper data collection, contradictions and lack of specifics in
audit requirements are the issues hotly debated among affected
stakeholders (Burgis, 2015; Hofmann et al., 2015; Jeffrey, 2012;
Young, 2015). Business groups successfully claimed that the
section 1502 violated companies’ free speech rights under the
US Constitution's First Amendment by in essence forcing them to
condemn their own products, and an US appeals court struck down
parts of the regulation in 2014. Despite the free speech finding,
however, the SEC continues to require companies to carry out due
diligence and report findings to the agency (Lynch and Hurley,
2014). At the same time, there is a broad consensus among Congo
experts that minerals are not a root cause of the violence and – at
best – fuel an already existing conflict (Radley and Vogel, 2015;
Tegera and 70 Congo experts, 2014).

14

Authors’ interview with NGO representative 2, by phone, October 9, 2015.

7

5. Conclusions
We do not know whether the new approach of mandatory due
diligence for natural resources will effectively lead to less armed
conflict, less deforestation and more sustainability in countries of
origin. We do know that there is a new foreign accountability
norm, which considers it ‘normal’ for extractive industries to be
held accountable for harmful practices abroad. US and European
companies are legally responsible for the import of illegally logged
timber that has potentially caused social and environmental
problems abroad. If SEC-registered companies use ‘conflict
minerals’ from the African Great Lakes region, they must be open
about this and thus fear reputational consequences. Our research
question was how we can explain such a shift in norm and policy.
We found non-state agency to be crucial in explaining the
emergence and cascade of the new norm. There have been
individual and collective norm entrepreneurs who have had strong
notions regarding the inappropriateness of foreign non-accountability for natural resource depletion and the finance of armed
conflicts in countries, such as the DRC. By ‘naming and shaming’, in
public campaigning and through advocacy, NGO activists have
exercised their power in a very professional manner to increase the
reputational risks to companies involved in harmful sourcing. In
the area of forestry, NGOs have been able to build upon boycotts of
tropical wood since the 1980s. In the area of minerals, the Raise
Hope for Congo campaign employed a range of celebrities and
caught a lot of media attention in the United States, while building
on the ideas established in the discussions on ‘blood diamonds’.
Norm entrepreneurs successfully framed the new norm in an
existing normative environment and thus avoided an open
confrontation with the free-trade paradigm. In the area of ‘conflict’
minerals, producers can still use them in their products, and in the
area of timber, only the legality of the product, rather than its
sustainability, determines whether it can be imported or not.
In addition to earlier findings on norm change in global politics,
we found norm entrepreneurs to be equally relevant in the phase
of norm cascade or policy diffusion. Individual actors, such as
Boukje Theeuwes at Philips, who was responsible for the first
product with Congolese ‘conflict-free’ tin, and Bas van Abel, who
started the company Fairphone, are leading the norm diffusion by
example. For the moment, such ‘fair trade’ initiatives target mainly
profitable niche markets. However, such initiatives have proven
that due diligence is possible, even in one of the most conflictprone regions in the world, and therefore more pressure is
mounted onto mainstream business. As a result, these business
entrepreneurs are contributing to a further diffusion of the new
foreign accountability norm.
Promoting mandatory due diligence measures as a response to
social and environmental problems is not without criticism. Critics
argue that promoting this norm would imply a recognition of a
structurally socially and environmentally harmful capitalist
economic system. As an interviewee explained: “If Fairphone
was serious, they would stop producing new phones in China and
reduce their business to the repair and recycling of old phones”.15
However, voluntarism has proven to be limited in competitive
global markets, while mandatory due diligence measures are
compatible with the dominant ideas of market efficiency and
corporate responsibility. If the foreign accountability norm is able
to spread to those markets that so far are more critical, such as
China, granting transparency about the conditions under which
natural resources have been extracted, will eventually become a
global normality.

15
Authors’ interview with NGO representative 2, by phone, October 9, 2015
(citation is a translation from German).

Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003

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EXIS 236 No. of Pages 9

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L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2016) xxx–xxx

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Brigitte-Schlieben-LangeProgram of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts BadenWuerttemberg (Germany) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation program under the Marie SklodowskaCurie grant agreement No 660245.
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Please cite this article in press as: L. Partzsch, M.C. Vlaskamp, Mandatory due diligence for ‘conflict minerals’ and illegally logged timber:
Emergence and cascade of a new norm on foreign accountability, Extr. Ind. Soc. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2016.07.003