(panel3)
Making multinational corporations accountable for their negative impacts on human rights is a major challenge in today’s global economy. Among the existing global corporate governance initiatives, the OECD Guidelines stand out for providing an extraterritorial grievance mechanism.
However, when a transnational social movement makes use of this mechanism to challenge corporate practices in a given country, one wonders how the proceedings alter power relations, stakeholder engagement and human rights enforcement on the field.
This paper analyzes the impact of this extraterritorial mechanism by looking at a specific case where a coalition of French and Indian NGOs challenged the investment of a French multinational corporation in India.
Drawing upon extensive field research in India and in France, we argue that the mechanism challenges corporate practices and stakeholder policies but faces structural hurdles which undermine its legitimacy and enforcement capacity: it has a country-specific institutional setting and it promotes legalization informally.
