Corporate Power over Human Rights: An Analytical Framework

Birchall, David

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3566296

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…Vice versa, if NAPs practice across states does not follow NAPs guidance, this is also potentially informative. If divergences between NAPs guidance and actual NAPs processes are observed uniformly across all states this might be because, for instance, experimentalist governance is essentially less likely in the area of business and human rights than in other policy domains or areas of human rights (de Búrca 2017; Armeni 2015; Kenner and Peake 2017; Goldstein and Ansell 2018), for instance, due to greater and universal power differentials between key players (Birchall 2021). Or, if traits of experimentalist governance are observed in some, but not other states' business and human rights NAPs, this might trigger a search for contingent, rather than structural, factors to explain this.…”

Section: Guidance On Business and Human Rights Napsmentioning

confidence: 99%

National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights: an Experimentalist Governance Analysis

2021

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National Action Plans (NAPs) on business and human rights are a growing phenomenon. Since 2011, 42 such plans have been adopted or are in-development worldwide. By comparison, only 39 general human rights action plans were published between 1993 and 2021. In parallel, NAPs have attracted growing scholarly interest. While some studies highlight their potential to advance national compliance with international norms, others criticise NAPs as cosmetic devices that states use to deflect attention from persisting abuses and needed regulation. In response to wider critiques of international human rights norms, and their failure to exact universal state compliance, experimentalist governance theory highlights the dynamic, dialogic and iterative character of human rights implementation as well as the role of stakeholders. In this article, we apply experimentalist governance theory to evaluate the role and character of business and human rights NAPs. Rather than attempting to evaluate NAPs’ ultimate consequences for rights-holders, which appears premature, we focus on NAPs processes. Specifically, we analyse NAPs processes in twenty-five states against five experimentalist governance criteria relating to (i) stakeholder participation; (ii) agreement on a broad problem definition; (iii) local contextualisation; (iv) monitoring and peer review and (v) periodic revision and learning. According to our findings, NAPs on business and human rights in most states demonstrate resemblance to the traits of experimentalist governance. In particular, our analysis points to the emergence of relatively sophisticated and demanding institutional governance mechanisms within NAPs — including the institutionalisation of complex deliberative processes. Nevertheless, our paper also identifies some significant shortcomings in NAPs, related to the lack of inclusion of vulnerable groups and the lack of explicit indicators and targets.

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Section: Guidance On Business and Human Rights Napsmentioning

confidence: 99%

National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights: an Experimentalist Governance Analysis

2021

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“…A key shift over the last forty years has been from a social democratic ordering to what is often termed a neoliberal ordering. This legal ordering creates extreme wealth and poverty and new forms of control and oppression, which are most visible in labor-related and democratic issues (Britton-Purdy et al 2020, 1786Birchall 2021a). Human rights obligations apply to these outcomes because they are the result of legal ordering, and human rights principles provide both for critical avenues and progressive alternatives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Rights and Political Economy: Addressing the Legal Construction of Poverty and Rights Deprivation

Birchall¹

2022

JLPE

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There has been a recent resurgence in scholarly work concerned with the economics of human rights. This article builds on this work to develop a conceptual framework of human rights and political economy. It provides a theoretical basis for the turn to human rights and economics, rooted in the increasing micro-management of the economy by liberal states that can constitute the state planning of material distribution within the state. It demonstrates that human rights principles do apply to economic questions and elaborates methods and practices to realize the potential of rights in this arena. The article applies these methods and conceptualizations to state obligations and business responsibilities to excavate current limits and potentials of rights and contextualizes the project within left critiques of rights and "claim right" perspectives.

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“…Quite to the contrary, the dominant pragmatic approach, most prominently represented by the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (OHCHR, 2011), has led to remarkable progress towards recognizing human rights predicaments in transnational enterprises, including GVCs. But some important facets of the debate and consequences of its dominant problem definition are largely left out, such as the corporate form (Baars, 2019), corporate power (Birchall, 2021) and legitimation (Scheper, 2019) in the human rights field.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplicity, the corporation and human rights in global value chains

Scheper¹

2022

Cooperation and Conflict

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Human rights in global value chains have become a key field of study in international law and corporate governance. The analysis often starts with a gap – a ‘governance gap’ in human rights protection. This pragmatic starting point calls for pragmatic solutions: better corporate compliance and more accountability. While this goes a long way in addressing corporate misconduct, the global corporate form, its power and legitimation in transnationally generating and appropriating value tend to become naturalized phenomena. Moreover, the effects of accountability agendas on corporate power and legitimation are hardly considered. Instead, I propose to address the ‘human rights problem’ by understanding the corporation and its networks as consequences of international politics – conceptualized as inter-societal multiplicity. The multiplicity lens offers a possibility to replace the governance gap with a productive conception of inter-societal conditions and can complement the focus on accountability and compliance. I conclude the article by tentatively sketching three important consequences of such a starting point for defining the problem of human rights in global value chains: the international dimensions of the division of labour under competitive conditions, the legitimation of corporate practices and the production of knowledge for their regulation.

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Corporate Power over Human Rights: An Analytical Framework

Cited by 3 publications

References 22 publications

National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights: an Experimentalist Governance Analysis

National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights: an Experimentalist Governance Analysis

Human Rights and Political Economy: Addressing the Legal Construction of Poverty and Rights Deprivation

Multiplicity, the corporation and human rights in global value chains

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