This chapter examines the emergence of the CCMCE, a legal/structural innovation that transformed the multinational firm into a constellation of legally separate but operationally unified corporate entities. Tracing its origins to the late nineteenth century, the CCMCE emerged from evolving doctrines of corporate personhood, limited liability, and the state’s adoption of territorial sovereignty as a legal principle. The pivotal shift occurred with New Jersey’s holding company laws (1888–96), enabling corporations to own other corporations and organize control through pyramidal structures. Combined with the formal recognition of intangible property – such as goodwill and future income streams – this model allowed firms to optimize control, risk, and regulatory positioning across jurisdictions. The CCMCE’s international diffusion, initially driven by practical business needs, soon enabled new forms of jurisdictional arbitrage, as corporate groups leveraged legal fragmentation to separate tangible operations from regulatory liabilities. By embedding the firm in a network of legally autonomous subsidiaries, the CCMCE model created opportunities to exploit the ‘law of two prices’ and selectively engage national regulatory regimes.

This chapter advances the argument that jurisdictional arbitrage is not merely a tactic of tax or liability avoidance, but a distinct form of power – rooted in autonomy, control, and legal engineering – that enables CCMCEs to reshape their operating environments. Drawing on insights from corporate strategy, international political economy, and the CORPLINK project, it reframes arbitrage as a modality of power akin to the creation of a ‘hidden empire’. Through the modular structure of the CCMCEs, MNCs exploit legal and jurisdictional fragmentation to escape regulatory constraints, minimize costs, and amplify market valuation. This structural agility insulates them from state oversight, enabling them to strategically socialize costs and privatize gains. Unlike traditional theories that depict corporate power as relational or behavioural, the chapter argues for a third dimension: power as autonomy – the ability to opt out of constraints by rearranging legal structures. This form of rule-based transgression is monopolized by a global elite of corporations, investors, and advisory firms who exploit regulatory differences not by violating rules but by mastering them. Jurisdictional arbitrage, then, is a primary mechanism of modern corporate power and a central driver of global inequality.

This chapter examines the obligations and responsibilities for protecting human rights and it does so by focusing mainly on ways in which states and other entities contribute to the violation of human rights standards. One of the major questions addressed here is whether the human rights obligations of states end at their territorial borders, or whether they also have extraterritorial obligations as well.

After highlighting patterns of types and targets of human rights violations, we introduce the main perpetrators. Trying to understand what motivates them, and, more importantly, how they can be constrained, is key to improving respect for human rights. We start by introducing a theoretical framework that helps us understand why human rights are violated. Why do peaceful forms of communication and negotiation collapse in favour of violence and destruction? Are acts of atrocity born out of rational calculations or are they the product of erratic and unpredictable behaviour? We then apply this theoretical model to understand the behaviour of the most common perpetrators of life integrity violations, the military and the police, as well as less prominent perpetrators, such as militias, rebel groups, and criminal cartels. Throughout this chapter we focus primarily on perpetrators of physical violence but integrate brief examples of other types of human rights violations.

The chapter sets off by examining the theoretical bases upon which a non-state actor (NSA) may be deemed to possess human rights obligations and critiques the various approaches put forward by states and the scholarly community. It then goes on to examine a variety of NSAs along with their own distinct position as regards their human rights role. Some NSAs, such as international financial institutions (IFIs), take a legalistic approach to the matter and are generally wary of accepting even the more fundamental obligations, whereas other actors are keen to achieve a broader human rights agenda and are thus willing to accept some human rights commitments. Besides intergovernmental organisations we also focus on multinational corporations (MNCs) and the way in which their operations have a significant impact on the rights of populations worldwide. It shall be demonstrated that, while their human rights ‘obligations’, if any, have largely arisen as a result of voluntary undertakings, they are now entering a hybrid phase of limited regulation, or at least of an attempt at regulation. Finally, we shed some light on national liberation movements and rebel groups and their distinct responsibilities under international humanitarian law (IHL).

This chapter underlines the need for contextualism in showing that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are more suited than multinational enterprises for wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and impacts in developing and emerging markets. While highlighting institutional conditions for enabling socially responsible practices by firms, it is argued that an appropriate regulatory environment is necessary to enhance the potential of SMEs.

Globalisation has placed democratic institutions under severe pressure as economic actors seek to take advantage of the disjuncture between national political governance and transnational economic activity. This chapter provides an introduction and overview as to the key themes to be addressed in the book. In particular, we highlight the debate between different approaches to democratic representation and associational democracy which is the theoretical framing for the remainder of the book: representation as claim versus representation as structure.

All across Africa, local transporters ferry humanitarian shipments, beer, powdered milk, mobile phones, soft drinks, and other ‘global’ commodities all the way into the interior of the continent. On their return journey, they feed local products like tropical hardwood, minerals and peanuts back into global supply chains. Through these logistical connections, whatever conspires in the dense forests of Central Africa is linked to the rest of the world. Whether it is to export timber from the Central African Republic, deliver food aid in South Sudan, or access consumer goods markets in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for logistical entrepreneurs, Central Africa is a ‘supply chain frontier’ where vast profits are made. But these expanding supply chains are also the engine behind new patterns of predation on the continent. To explore this hidden side of the global economy, Chapter 6 asks, how does a multinational corporation navigate roadblock politics? Or, put differently, how come today’s panoply of Central African roadblocks doesn’t disrupt global supply chains? Chapter 6 makes the case that transnational circulation is not somehow detached from the terrain through which it transacts; global supply chains come to life by empowering and sustaining a host of actors along their routes.

One dynamic for the entanglement of law might be the mobilization of law from below. The myriad mobilizations of law by local social struggles around transnational relations refer to presumed precedents from other situations and other jurisdictions, and claim the applicability of norms from other legal orders. Rumours of rights entangle law. Such mobilizations from below rely on strategic comparisons, sometimes conjectural and tentative, and a belief in law’s coherence. From their position of relative weakness, they appeal to any norm that might provide legal arguments. They struggle to make these norms binding, and hence for their trans-systemic validity. This chapter argues that these entanglements strive for relational coherence – a coherence that is simultaneously trans-systemic and unsystematic. It is trans-systemic inasmuch as it refers to norms from various normative orders, and unsystematic to the extent that it does not move towards an intra-systemic logic. Yet such entanglement might lead to cases being treated increasingly as singular, that is, in relation to their unique characteristics. This is evident in out-of-court settlements in which transnational legal struggles frequently end. The paradox is thus that entanglements engendered by struggles seeking the trans-systemic validity of norms increase attention to the singular characteristics of a constellation.

Transnational regulation of corporate behaviour is characterized by a multiplicity of reflexive norm-making processes in a variety of different forums, creating a web of corporate social responsibility (CSR) normativity in which relationing, cross-referencing but also contestation between bodies of norms become the rule rather than the exception. These interactions are particularly visible within a subset of CSR norms described as meta-regulatory, which often serve as focal points for entanglement. The chapter focuses on one such instrument – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The structure of the guidelines facilitates coordinated entanglement by including strategic openings and references to external bodies of norms. Moreover, the existence of OECD National Contact Points (the guidelines’ implementation mechanism) also enables more fluid and contingent interactions between bodies of norms, described in the chapter as ad hoc entanglement. By analysing both coordinated and ad hoc entanglement in relation to the OECD guidelines, the chapter identifies some of the dynamics which characterise the interactions between bodies of CSR norms. The resulting picture is nuanced, with entanglement being present in varying shades ranging from distancing to proximity.

The goal of this chapter is to elucidate the role and responsibility of the business sector for safeguarding these two rights by clarifying the origins, legal nature, scope and enforcement of obligations placed upon corporate actors. Specifically, the chapter examines whether and how the status of a duty-bearer affects the ambit of the two rights and obligations they give rise to. In other words, what are the differences between the role of businesses and that of states in securing the rights to work and just and favourable conditions of work? While the traditional (positivist) paradigm of human rights protection sees states as ultimately responsible for ensuring that rights are respected by everyone within their respective jurisdictions, certain aspects of the two rights may be fulfilled only by states. In that sense, the scope of duties arising out of the rights to work and just and favourable conditions of work which businesses can in theory be responsible for is materially different.