Bargaining in Networks: Relationships and the Governance of Conflict Diamonds

In the early 2000s, the international efforts to stop “conflict diamonds” from fueling civil wars in Africa underwent dramatic institutional change. After a series of ineffective UN sanctions in Angola and Sierra Leone, a campaign launched by nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) triggered negotiations that started in May 2000 and ended in November 2002 with the formation of the Kimberley Process (KP) (Grant and Taylor 2004). The KP is a transnational public-private governance scheme in which states, the diamond industry, and NGOs cooperate to regulate the global diamond trade and fight conflict diamonds (Haufler 2010). Initially, KP monitoring was based on state self-reporting and had little “teeth.” Soon after its launch however, negotiations started again, and within less than twelve months, KP participants established a monitoring system that combines state self-reporting with peer review inspections of national diamond control regimes.