Target 17.15: Respect national policy space
Respect each country's policy space and leadership to establish and implement policies for poverty eradication and sustainable development
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Policy space is formally a matter between states, but corporations constrain it directly through investor-state dispute settlement. UNCTAD's navigator records 1,332 known treaty-based cases brought by investors against states, 60 of them initiated in 2023. Since the decision to sue a government is made by companies, many of them listed, owners can help at the margin by opposing claims that target public-interest regulation, though no shareholder resolution on ISDS use is on record.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
No shareholder advocacy found yet
We looked and found nothing that met our standard, which is a source we opened and confirmed. No shareholder advocacy located on corporate use of investor-state dispute settlement. The rationale itself states that no shareholder resolution on ISDS use is on record, and the databases checked carry no ISDS or treaty-arbitration entry. Civil society work on ISDS that we could find is directed at governments and treaty negotiations, which the brief excludes. Note: this session's web search budget was exhausted early, so research continued by direct fetches of ICCR, As You Sow, Ceres, Green Century, Proxy Preview and SEC EDGAR.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.