‘Change here for…’: Understanding progress in business and human rights through legal entanglement

Abstract

Progress in the business and human rights space can be quite a fickle thing to assess. Despite intensive norm development, many observers emphasise elements of stagnation within the field. This article argues that much of the frustration is caused by the dominance of a linear understanding of progress which is fixated on the dichotomy between soft and hard forms of regulation. This, in turn, obscures much of the dynamism within the field. To better account for progress within the business and human rights space, the article suggests a shift of framing from a linear conception of regulatory change to one that understands the field as an entangled normative network characterised through the connections between norms. By using the norm of human rights due diligence as an example, the article highlights the nuanced developments and linkages between various instruments, systems, and actors that evidence intense norm-making activity within the business and human rights space. The on-going normative-discursive exchange between stakeholders produces a norm that is constituted through an iterative process of entanglement.