The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011, represent a landmark document in the field of business and human rights. As part of their duty to protect from corporate-related human rights abuses, states are asked to ensure vertical and horizontal domestic policy coherence (Principle 8). In many states, this has triggered processes to develop national coherence strategies on Business and Human Rights. The European Commission, by inviting member states to present their national coherence strategies until the end of 2012, has further promoted these processes in the European context.
This paper takes a governance perspective to analyze the processes through which states develop national coherence strategies for the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. More precisely, it compares the strategy development processes in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, with respect to three distinctive features of governance theory: (1) the multijurisdictional and transnational nature of the process including actors across different policy sectors and levels of government, (2) the plurality of state and non-state stakeholders present in the policymaking process, as well as (3) the network character of governing arrangements leading to policy outcomes.
The paper aims to shed light on the structure, dynamics and content of the processes through which the four states approach the implementation of their duty to respect from business-related human rights abuses. It shall conclude with a set of explanations accounting for differences in policy outcomes among the states.
