This paper challenges the monolithic portrayal of the state as inherently ‘bad’ when it comes to implementation of Indigenous rights. Offering a comparative analysis of case studies from four continents we demonstrate examples of frontline state officials proactively advancing Indigenous rights to land and environment. Combining distinct literatures on institutional theory, we develop an analytical framework that sheds light on bureaucratic agency within state-Indigenous relations. The findings show how government organizations maintain a broadly colonial agenda, but that officials on the inside sometimes manage to advance decolonizing or otherwise supportive actions. We propose the concept of institutional braiding to describe this agency exerted by state officials in collaboration with Indigenous representatives when navigating co-existing normative orders. By examining the fraught institutional constraints faced by frontline actors, we contribute to debates on Indigenous-state relations and the prospects of reaching common ground in the contact zone between divergent ontologies.

Mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) policies seem to represent a pathbreaking shift from voluntary measures to binding rules for global supply chains. Yet these policies endorse a “smart-mix” of voluntary and mandatory measures, and risk over-reliance on questionable private-sector assurances. In this paper, we ask how businesses framed these private/voluntary efforts in the face of looming regulation, focusing on the EU's new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Through a systematic coding of policy positions, we find businesses (1) using voluntary initiatives to delegitimize mandatory measures, (2) seeking to institutionalize voluntary norms, (3) pushing for private assurances to signify legal compliance, or (4) endorsing mandatory measures to protect the competitive advantage of sustainability leaders. While frames (1) and (4) shaped the debate, we argue that frames (2) and (3) are more fully reflected in the final text of the Directive. We explore both theoretical and practical implications.

Interlinked water and climate impacts are increasingly crossing borders via global supply chains. A recent wave of supply chain regulations, based on human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD), has emerged with the goal of holding companies accountable for adverse impacts throughout their supply chains. We develop an analytical framework to theorize how key factors grounded in domestic contexts shape how companies put HREDD in practice, focusing on water and climate risks. Our framework distinguishes between knowledge and transparency; domestic policies; and actor constellations and power. We apply this framework to study how large agricultural producers in Brazil (mal-)adapt to increasing water scarcity and climate change impacts, contributing to local water conflicts. Subsequently, we analyze how multinational companies have addressed these domestic factors in their HREDD systems. Our study provides a nuanced understanding of current trends and challenges of transnational business governance to effectively target cross-scalar climate and water risks.

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.

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. 

The past decade has witnessed profound transformations in subnational territories engendered by a dramatic increase in natural resource extraction. Research to date has concentrated largely on why the transfer of extractive revenues often reinforces a ‘local resource curse’; however, little work has been done on subnational governments’ attempts to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of mining expansion. Drawing on the literature on subnational governance in the context of resource extraction and neoliberal reforms, this study analyses the strategies – confrontational or collaborative – subnational political leaders pursue and the reasons why they pursue them. The findings are based on in-depth field research in two Peruvian subnational regions that are highly dependent on mineral extraction. More specifically, we examine the collaborative strategy pursued in one region and compare it with a confrontational strategy in another. Our analysis indicates that an interplay between institutional capacity and supporting coalitions affects whether subnational leaders undertake a collaborative or a confrontational approach. Based on our findings, we consider the likely effects of these strategies for regional development. By shifting the focus to the agency of subnational leaders, we make an essential contribution to debates about subnational governance in the realm of resource extraction.

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. 

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. 

There has been an unprecedented inclusion of Indigenous peoples in environmental governance instruments like free, prior, and informed consent; reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects; climate adaptation initiatives; and environmental impact assessment. We draw on theories of participatory governance to show how locally implemented processes have been shaped by their interactions with invited, closed, and indigenous-led spaces at multiple scales. Empirically, our article is based on field research in Latin America, semistructured interviews, and a systematic literature review. We find four main barriers that have (re-)produced environmental injustices in environmental governance: first, a lack of influence over the institutional design of governance instruments; second, the exclusion of Indigenous peoples in the domestication of global instruments; third, policy incoherencies constraining the scope for decision-making; and fourth, weak cross-scale linkages between Indigenous-led spaces. This article helps to elucidate constraints of participatory spaces and identify leeway for transformation toward environmental justice.