The business and human rights regulatory train in motion: a critical genealogy of human rights due diligence and corporate power

Abstract

Corporate activity increasingly shapes the material, institutional, and discursive conditions under which human rights are enjoyed or denied. In response to corporate-related human rights violations, Human Rights Due Diligence (‘HRDD’) has become the dominant regulatory form in Business and Human Rights (‘BHR’), particularly through the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the recent movement towards mandatory HRDD. While often presented as the most reasonable and pragmatic response to corporate harm, HRDD also raises deeper questions about the terms on which corporate accountability has been made legally and politically thinkable. Against this background, this thesis addresses the central research question: how did HRDD become the dominant regulatory form in BHR, and what are the implications of this dominance for the regulation of corporate power? Using a desk-based methodology that combines legal, policy, and literature research, and building on critical legal scholarship, social constructivism, and critical international political-economy, this thesis reconstructs the historical and institutional conditions through which HRDD acquired authority. It argues that HRDD’s dominance reflects a neoliberal accommodation of corporate accountability. Although HRDD moves beyond pure voluntarism, it remains grounded in tools already familiar from CSR and corporate risk management. The findings reveal that HRDD expands the language of accountability while preserving the managerial structure through which companies define, translate, and manage human rights harm. Its legalisation may harden corporate responsibility, but it does not necessarily confront the material, institutional, and discursive forms of corporate power that sustain corporate-related human rights violations.