State Ownership and the United Nations Business and Human Rights Agenda: Three Instruments, Three Narratives

Mikko Rajavuori

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

    Abstract

    The rise of globally-oriented state ownership has emerged as a crucial issued across political, economic, and legal planes during the past decade. Contrary to the traditional approach where state ownership is viewed primarily through trade law, antitrust law, and corporate law, this article discusses the proliferating state shareholder power in relation to international human rights law. In particular, the article interrogates three recent UN human rights governance instruments by using narratives that highlight perils, potential, and specialty of state ownership in the emerging business and human rights agenda. It is argued that the UN instruments realize the changes in the architecture of globalized state ownership, portray it as a regulatory space, and seek to utilize this space by recalibrating states' private shareholder identities with public ends. At the same, however, the nascent human rights-based regulation of state ownership exposes a deeper market contingency underpinning the techniques of contemporary human rights governance.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)665-708
    JournalIndiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
    Volume23
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2016

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'State Ownership and the United Nations Business and Human Rights Agenda: Three Instruments, Three Narratives'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this