How do mandatory due diligence norms emerge and why are some stronger than others? Comparing policy-making in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK

In recent years, binding regulations in the ‘home states’ of corporations have emerged with the aim of increasingly holding corporations accountable for human rights and environmental impacts throughout their supply chains. According to recent studies, norms based on a mandatory due diligence (MDD) approach, which build on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011), represent a new, potentially effective approach to govern global supply chains. In particular, strong MDD institutions are assumed to contribute to harden foreign corporate accountability. We define institutional strength as the degree to which institutions are comprehensive in their scope, stringent regarding their requirements on due diligence systems and enforceable, especially by establishing legal liability. In this paper we will draw on norm diffusion theory and historical institutionalism for discussing the following research questions: Why do we currently observe a trend to adopt MDD norms throughout European countries and at EU level? What actor constellations and sequences of events explain that some of the norms crystallizing at the national level are stronger, while others are watered down or even abandoned in the course of the policy-making process? The empirical analysis focuses on the connections between policy-making processes and the institutional strength of MDD norms in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, because in these four countries related policy-making processes have been particularly advanced. Based on a triangulation of data such as primary documents, media articles, statements of state and non-state actors and semi-structured interviews, we carry out fine-grained analyses of the processes in which MDD norms are contested and negotiated. To interpret our data, we apply the comparative sequential method that helps to explain which actor constellations and sequences of events account for the development of strong MDD norms or, alternatively, paths of weak institutionalization. Among the important conditions for explaining variances of institutional strength, we discuss differing degrees of social mobilization, business lobbying, adjustment costs of private actors and differences in partisan politics. This comparative study on the drafting and institutional design of emerging MDD norms in Europe aims to contribute to scholarly debates about how states could govern complex supply chains more effectively, thereby contributing to harden foreign corporate accountability.