Advancing the Research Frontier on New Supply Chain Regulations: Connecting Processes from the Demand-Side and Supply-Side: Part 2

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been a new wave of regulations that aim to govern international business toward sustainability. The EU and European member states have taken a pioneering role in this new wave of regulatory innovation. For instance, the EU has recently agreed upon its regulation on deforestation-free products and it is about to adopt a directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence and a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Previous research on transnational business governance has extensively studied private governance initiatives and global environmental governance arrangements, while new public policies with extraterritorial reach have been under-researched. To govern complex global supply chains is associated with significant challenges, which still need to be better understood. This panel promises to advance existing scholarship by presenting new insights into policy processes surrounding supply chain regulations in Europe and globally and on first experiences with the uptake, implementation and consequences of new rules in producing sites in the Global South. Drawing on conceptual and empirical contributions on new public policies and related strands of literature, this panel explores the patterns, causes and consequences of this new trend. More specifically, the panel asks: (1) which actor constellations have shaped ongoing policy-making processes and accountability dynamics at EU level and in Member States? (2) How do new public policies interact with existing private governance initiatives (in synergic or conflictive ways)? (3) Under which circumstances (actor constellations, supply chain characteristics, domestic context conditions) can new supply chain regulations steer company structures and practices? (4) What are the implications of new supply chain governance regimes for environmental justice? The panel brings together a group of researchers working on new supply chain regulations in hitherto fragmented research communities, anchored in different scholarly debates (business and human rights, environmental governance and global supply chains) and with expertise on both the demand- and supply side of global supply chains. The aim is to enable these scholarly communities to enter into a dialogue on the implications and challenges of the recent proliferation of public policies aiming to hold corporations accountable for their impacts in producing sites and along complex commodity chains.

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