The Problematisation and Regulation of Responsibility in Transnational Supply Chains

Project Description

In the face of the persistence of accidents, human rights and environmental violations along the supply chains of transnational corporations, "moral entrepreneurs" (Giesen 1983) in transnational advocacy networks are increasingly pushing to secure binding rules through state and intergovernmental institutions. The socio-legal project "The Problematisation and Regulation of Responsibility in Transnational Supply Chains: Public Discourse, Private Governance and State Intervention in Germany and Switzerland" examines how the regulation of transnational supply chains is publicly thematised, politically implemented and legally decided. It explores the question of how these different dimensions of problem management are interlinked and interact with each other. Against this background, the project has three substantive goals: to map the transnational field of supply chain regulation and to analyse two
comparative cases in more detail; to reconstruct the public problematisation of responsibility in transnational supply chains for these two cases; and to trace the use and change of legal norms.

The former, in the context of different national approaches, focuses specifically on the two comparative perspectives of Germany and Switzerland. In this way, the influence of institutional conditions and path-dependent decision-making practices in this policy field will
be illuminated. The second substantive aim is to analyse the political dynamics of regulation. The third project goal concerns the links between public thematisation, political decisions and the use of as well as changes in legal possibilities, thus highlighting the use of courts as a mode of influence for law-making.

The methodological approach shows its strength through the combination of different data sources and analytical procedures, including for example document analyses, expert interviews, or discourse network analyses (DNA).

Disciplines

Sociology, Law/Legal Studies

Funding agency

German Research Foundation (DFG)

Funding period

2023 – 2026

Literature

Holzer, Boris (2023): Rules and responsibilities: business and social norms in transnational governance. In: Mariolina Eliantonio, Emilia Korkea-aho und Ulrika Mörth (eds.): Research Handbook on Soft Law. Cheltenham/Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, pp. 132–144. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839101939.00018