Business Actors’ Interest in Harder and Softer Regulation of Human Rights Due Diligence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars of global governance have long attended to the role of non-state actors in formulating and interpreting regulatory instruments, analysing these actors’ engagement with processes, their influence, and their preferences in terms of the content and, to a limited degree, form of regulation. Among the non-state actors involved in governance settings, business actors are an interesting subject given the resources at their disposal to exert material, structural, and ideational power and due to the global nature of large corporations. They are especially relevant in human rights regulation, as the global nature of business activity through supply chains, subsidiaries, and finance is contrasted with a state-centred human rights regime. Several regulatory instruments have been passed in this space, both nationally and internationally, and regulatory initiatives are increasingly common. This article focuses on business actors’ potential interest in the form of regulation, how different forms of regulation may affect different business actors, and how the interest of business actors can be traced back to notions of public and private.