Jack Taggart

Dr Jack Taggart

Small Group Project 2025-26

The Battle for Plastics: Corporate Power and the UN Global Plastics Treaty

This project examines how powerful corporate entities respond to a significant threat to business-as-usual: ongoing negotiations for a legally binding global treaty on plastic pollution. Central to this inquiry is our concept of the ‘petrochemical historical bloc’, a coalition of fossil fuel, petrochemical, and consumer goods industries, alongside states with vested interests in maintaining and expanding plastic production (1). While social science research has begun addressing the ‘petrochemical blindspot’ in climate debates (2), limited attention has been paid to the structural power and agency of big-brand corporations (such as Coca-Cola, Unilever and Nestlé) that rely on disposable plastics, or their relationship with upstream industries in shaping the global plastics economy.

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Areas of interest

Political Economy Governance Global Development Development Financialisation Privatisation Public Policy Finance Plastics

Cohort

FG11

Biography

Jack Taggart is a Lecturer in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast.

His research examines various issues across international political economy, global governance, and global development.

As concerns global development, he is specifically concerned with ongoing shifts in the policy field of development cooperation, including: the rise of new state and private actors; the privatisation (and financialisation) of a hitherto public policy; transformations in state form and function, and; shifts in the nature of development finance.

Jack's second strand of research examines global governance: the matrix of institutions, norms, ideas, and practices beyond the level of the nation-state. He is particularly interested in the rise and normalisation of 'mulistakeholderism' as an ostensibly novel and more inclusive governance modality across various issue areas in global governance. Alongside this, he is conducting research into the changing economic orthodoxy of major global economic governance institutions in response to the rise of the so-called 'New State Capitalism' observed across the Global North and Global South. Jack is also conducting research into UN efforts to instigate a Treaty to End Plastic Pollution, and the role of multistakeholderism in these processes, alongside corporate strategies and power.

Biographical details correct as of 26.06.25