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• The politics of supply chain regulations: Towards foreign corporate accountability in the area of human rights and the environment?

  2023. Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Andrea Lenschow. Regulation and Governance 17 (4), 853-869

  Artikel

  In recent years, binding regulations in the “home states” of corporations have emerged mainly in the Global North with the aim of holding corporations accountable for human rights and environmental impacts throughout their supply chains. However, we still need a better understanding about to what extent such regulations contribute to enhance “foreign corporate accountability (FCA).” This article introduces a special issue that theorizes and empirically investigates foreign accountability dynamics. We do so by advancing an analytical framework that conceptualizes FCA and identify important contextual conditions that help to explain accountability dynamics. Applying this framework, we show that the drafting, implementation, and enforcement of such regulations are highly political processes, wherein competing ideas embedded within unequal actor constellations and institutional environments shape the possibilities to achieve more transformative change. By theorizing and empirically investigating FCA dynamics, we contribute to advance debates about the sustainability governance of global supply chains. 

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• Foreign corporate accountability: The contested institutionalization of mandatory due diligence in France and Germany

  2023. Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Andrea Lenschow. Regulation and Governance 17 (4), 891-908

  Artikel

  In the recent past, European states have adopted mandatory due diligence (MDD) laws for holding companies accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of their supply chains. The institutionalization of the international due diligence norm into domestic legislation has, however, been highly contested. Our contribution analyzes the discursive struggles about the meaning of due diligence that have accompanied the institutionalization of MDD in Germany and France. Based on document analysis and legal analysis of laws and law proposals, we identify a state-centric, a market-based, and a polycentric-governance discourse. These discourses are based on fundamentally different understandings of how the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights should be translated into hard law. By outlining these discourses and comparing the related policy preferences, we contribute with a better understanding of different ways in which MDD is institutionalized, with important consequences for the possibilities to enhance corporate accountability in global supply chains. 

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• Integrating human rights in the sustainability governance of global supply chains: Exploring the deforestation-land tenure nexus

  2024. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Maria-Therese Gustafsson. Environmental Science and Policy 154, 103690

  Artikel

  In contemporary discourse, the need to address urgent environmental issues with a social perspective is widely acknowledged. While theories on policy integration have primarily focused on the national scale, limited attention has been given to the merging of environmental and human rights considerations in global supply chain sustainability governance. Drawing on policy integration theories, we develop an analytical framework for studying Human Rights and Environmental Integration (HREI) within global supply chain governance, specifically examining the deforestation-land tenure nexus in soy supply chains from Brazil to Europe. Our empirical analysis focuses on key policy instruments, including the Soy Moratorium, the Working Group on the Cerrado, the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), and the EU Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR). Drawing from extensive fieldwork in Brazil, we assess the integration of land tenure in these policy instruments, revealing a general weakness in this aspect. Nonetheless, grassroots organizations have played a crucial role in advocating for enhanced HREI, urging the inclusion of land tenure rights in instruments addressing deforestation. Our research highlights that, although global supply chain instruments may not entirely compensate for the deficiencies of domestic policies, they should, at the very least, strive to comprehensively address complex sustainability problems and prevent actions that could worsen existing issues or give rise to new sustainability problems. In conclusion, our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the opportunities and structural constraints associated with integrated approaches to interconnected human rights and environmental issues.

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• Towards more sustainable global supply chains? Company compliance with new human rights and environmental due diligence laws

  2023. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor, Maria-Therese Gustafsson. Environmental Politics

  Artikel

  Binding regulations have, recently, emerged in the Global North with the aim of holding companies accountable for environmental and/or human rights impacts throughout their supply chains. This article develops and applies an analytical framework to analyze corporate accountability dynamics in global trade, with a focus on the French Duty of Vigilance (DV) law. We analyze how companies in the agri-food sector have complied with the law as well as the emergence of new accountability dynamics. We find that while companies have improved their due diligence systems over time, they enjoy much discretion to interpret their obligations according to a managerial logic and to disclose information selectively. Nevertheless, the DV law has contributed to new accountability dynamics, wherein civil society can use civil liability to pressure companies to comply. Overall, the article advances our understanding of company compliance with new supply chain regulations and the accountability dynamics activated by such rules. 

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