This article uses snapshots, rather than the ongoing flows of diffusion/contestation typically emphasized by constructivists, to explore the exercise of power through normative change. Its case is a high-profile Human Rights Council initiative: the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP s). These UNGP s have successfully presented meanings as fixed while actually stretching those meanings’ boundaries. They reconceptualize what it means to “respect” and “protect” human rights. This is surprising given that the principles were framed as a conservative exercise at clarification, and under-noticed due to the legal rather than conceptual focus of the existing critical literature. To respect human rights, according to the UNGP s, agents need to take costly positive action. Furthermore, protect obligations come before respect. These are significant innovations. On the other hand, two missed opportunities of the UNGP s are their thin harm-based foundation for respect obligations, and their state centrism about who has duties to protect.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Abrahamsen, Rita, and Michael C. Williams. Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Barnett, Michael, and Martha Finnemore. Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Bódig, Mátyás. “Doctrinal Innovation and State Obligations: The Patterns of Doctrinal Development in the Jurisprudence of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” In Human Rights Protection in Global Politics: Responsibilities of State and Non-State Actors, edited by Kurt Mills and David Jason Karp (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 49–68.
Bonnitcha, Jonathan, and Robert McCorquodale. “The Concept of ‘Due Diligence’ in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” European Journal of International Law 28 (3) (2017), 899–919.
Brincat, Shannon. “The Harm Principle and Recognition Theory: On the Complementarity between Linklater, Honneth and the Project of Emancipation.” Critical Horizons 14 (2) (2013), 225–256.
Cantú Rivera, Humberto. “National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights: Progress or Mirage?” Business and Human Rights Journal 4 (2) (2019), 213–237.
Cassel, Doug. “The Third Session of the UN Intergovernmental Working Group on a Business and Human Rights Treaty.” Business and Human Rights Journal 3 (2) (2018), 277–283.
Clapham, Andrew. “Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors in Conflict Situations.” International Review of the Red Cross 88 (863) (2006), 491–523.
Coleman, Lara Montesinos. “Struggles, over Rights: Humanism, Ethical Dispossession and Resistance.” Third Word Quarterly 36 (6) (2015), 1060–1075.
Cutler, A. Clare. Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
De Schutter, Olivier. “Towards a New Treaty on Businesss and Human Rights.” Business and Human Rights Journal 1 (1) (2016), 41–67.
Deng, Francis M. “Dealing with the Displaced: A Challenge to the International Community.” Global Governance 1 (1) (1995), 45–57.
Deng, Francis Mading, Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald S. Rothchild, and I. William Zartman. Sovereignty As Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996).
Eide, Asbjørn, Wenche Barth Eide, Susantha Goonatilake, Joan Gossow, and Omawale, eds. Food as a Human Right (Tokyo: United Nations University, 1984).
Eide, Asbjørn, Arne Oshaug, and Wenche Barth Eide. “Food Security and the Right to Food in International Law and Development.” Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems 1 (2) (1991), 415–467.
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52 (4) (1998), 887–917.
Forsythe, David P. “The UN and Human Rights at Fifty: An Incremental but Incomplete Revolution.” Global Governance 1 (3) (1995), 297–318.
Frege, Gottlob. “Sense and Reference.” The Philosophical Review 57 (3) (1948), 209–230.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan (Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1651] 1996).
Hopf, Ted. “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory.” International Security 23 (1) (1998), 171–200.
International Commission of Jurists, Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights, and Centre for Human Rights of the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University. “The Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 20 (3) (1998) 691–704.
International Committee of the Red Cross. “The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Their Additional Protocols.” 29 October 2010. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions/overview-geneva-conventions.htm.
Karp, David Jason. “Transnational Corporations in ‘Bad States’: Human Rights Duties, Legitimate Authority and the Rule of Law in International Political Theory.” International Theory 1 (1) (2009), 87–118.
Karp, David Jason. Responsibility for Human Rights: Transnational Corporations in Imperfect States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Karp, David Jason. “What Is the Responsibility to Respect Human Rights? Reconsidering the ‘Respect, Protect, and Fulfill’ Framework.” International Theory 12 (1) (2020), 83–108.
Kobrin, Stephen J. “Private Political Authority and Public Responsibility: Transnational Politics, Transnational Firms and Human Rights.” Business Ethics Quarterly 19 (3) (2009), 349–374.
Koch, Ida Elisabeth. “Dichotomies, Trichotomies or Waves of Duties?” Human Rights Law Review 5 (1) (2005), 81–103.
Krook, Mona Lena, and Jacqui True. “Rethinking the Life Cycles of International Norms: The United Nations and the Global Promotion of Gender Equality.” European Journal of International Relations 18 (1) (2010), 103–127.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by Alphonso Lingus (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981).
Linklater, Andrew. “The Harm Principle and Global Ethics.” Global Society 20 (3) (2006), 329–343.
Lukes, Stephen. Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Macklem, Patrick. “Human Rights in International Law: Three Generations or One?” London Review of International Law 3 (1) (2015), 61–92.
McLoughlin, Stephen. “From Reaction to Resilience in Mass Atrocity Prevention: An Analysis of the 2013 UN Report The Responsibility to Protect: State Responsibility and Prevention.” Global Governance 22 (4) (2016), 473–490.
Meron, Theodor. “The Humanization of Humanitarian Law.” American Journal of International Law 94 (2) (2000), 239–278.
Mitoma, Glenn, and Kerry Bystrom. “Humanitarianism and Responsibility in Discourse and Practice.” In Human Rights Protection in Global Politics: Responsibilities of States and Non-State Actors, eds. Kurt Mills and David Jason Karp (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 23–45.
Neglia, Maddalena. “The UNGP s—Five Years on: From Consensus to Divergence in Public Regulation on Business and Human Rights.” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 34 (4) (2016), 289–317.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Douglas Smith (Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1887] 1996).
Orford, Anne. International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Pogge, Thomas. “Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation.” In Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? ed. Thomas Pogge (Oxford: UNESCO and Oxford University Press, 2007), 11–53.
Pogge, Thomas. “Are We Violating the Human Rights of the World’s Poor?” Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 14 (2) (2011), 1–33.
Risse, Thomas, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Rosenau, James N. “Governance in the Twenty-first Century.” Global Governance 1 (1) (1995), 13–43.
Ruggie, John G. “Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights.” UN Doc. A/HRC/8/5. Human Rights Council, UN General Assembly, 8th sess. (New York: UN, 2008). http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/TransnationalCorporations/Pages/Reports.aspx.
Ruggie, John G. “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework.” UN Doc. A/HRC/17/31. Human Rights Council, UN General Assembly, 17th sess. (New York: UN, 2011). http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/TransnationalCorporations/Pages/Reports.aspx.
Ruggie, John G. Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights (New York: Norton, 2013).
Ruggie, John G. “Global Governance and ‘New Governance Theory’: Lessons from Business and Human Rights.” Global Governance 20 (1) (2014), 5–17.
Scheper, Christian. “From Naming and Shaming to Knowing and Showing: Human Rights and the Power of Corporate Practice.” International Journal of Human Rights 19 (6) (2015), 737–756.
Sending, Ole Jacob. The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015).
Shavin, Catie. “Unlocking the Potential of the New OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Business Conduct.” Business and Human Rights Journal 4 (1) (2019), 139–145.
Shue, Henry. Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Strange, Susan. States and Markets (London: Pinter, 1988).
UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. “General Comment 12 (‘The Right to Adequate Food’).” UN Doc. E/C.12/1999/5. 20th sess. (Geneva: UN, 1999). http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/TBSearch.aspx?TreatyID=9&DocTypeID=11.
Weissbrodt, David, and Muria Kruger. “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises.” American Journal of International Law 97 (4) (2003), 901–922.
Welsh, Jennifer M. “Norm Contestation and the Responsibility to Protect.” Global Responsibility to Protect 5 (4) (2013), 365–396.
Wiener, Antje. The Invisible Constitution of Politics: Contested Norms and International Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 2337 | 856 | 42 |
Full Text Views | 204 | 35 | 4 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 485 | 89 | 10 |
This article uses snapshots, rather than the ongoing flows of diffusion/contestation typically emphasized by constructivists, to explore the exercise of power through normative change. Its case is a high-profile Human Rights Council initiative: the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP s). These UNGP s have successfully presented meanings as fixed while actually stretching those meanings’ boundaries. They reconceptualize what it means to “respect” and “protect” human rights. This is surprising given that the principles were framed as a conservative exercise at clarification, and under-noticed due to the legal rather than conceptual focus of the existing critical literature. To respect human rights, according to the UNGP s, agents need to take costly positive action. Furthermore, protect obligations come before respect. These are significant innovations. On the other hand, two missed opportunities of the UNGP s are their thin harm-based foundation for respect obligations, and their state centrism about who has duties to protect.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 2337 | 856 | 42 |
Full Text Views | 204 | 35 | 4 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 485 | 89 | 10 |