The problematization and regulation of responsibility in transnational supply chains: public discourse, private governance and state intervention in Germany and Switzerland

该研究项目以德国和瑞士为重点，旨在调查跨国供应链中的企业社会责任问题是如何以具体监管项目的形式公开讨论、政治回答和法律决定的。跨国公司利用全球供应链和生产网络中工资、劳动力和环境标准方面的不平等，获得相对成本优势。尽管有国际公约，但几乎没有任何具有全球约束力的标准。在公众不满和事故问题化的背景下，关于跨国供应链应在多大程度上受跨国公司原籍国国家法律监管的讨论越来越多。近年来，在许多国家，即德国和瑞士，已经讨论或已经在政治上决定了监管跨国供应链的具体立法举措。这意味着，最初在企业社会责任学术研究中只受到有限关注的法律责任维度，正变得越来越重要。在此背景下，我们将研究公共问题表达和制度问题管理如何交织在一起，以及政治公共领域、政策过程和法庭中的问题化和谈判过程如何为跨国价值链的（规范性）监管框架做出贡献。为此，将重构公共话语中的论证定位，并将其与德国和瑞士的政治和法律发展联系起来。因此，该研究项目结合了社会学、政治和法律的观点、方法和方法，进行跨国比较研究设计。实证调查是基于比较德国和瑞士在欧洲和国际法背景下对跨国供应链的监管。在进一步的步骤中，对两国跨国供应链辩论中的行动者和论点进行了话语网络分析。这将揭示政治公共领域中不断变化的问题、责任归属和行动者星座。最后，从法律角度进行补充，一方面对跨国公司的责任条件进行判例法分析，另一方面对跨国公司的责任条件进行教条法和比较法分析。不同的理论和方法方法的结合打开了检查跨国供应链中责任的问题化和监管的可能性，从而获得对企业责任的话语和法律层面的相互作用的新见解。

With a focus on Germany and Switzerland, the research project aims to investigate how questions of corporate social responsibility in transnational supply chains are publicly discussed, politically answered and legally decided in the form of concrete regulatory projects. Multinational companies exploit inequalities in wages as well as in labour and environmental standards along global supply chains and production networks to gain comparative cost advantages. Despite international conventions, there are hardly any globally binding standards. In the context of public problematisation of grievances and accidents, there is an increasing discussion as to the extent to which transnational supply chains should be regulated by national laws in the countries of origin of multinational companies. In recent years, concrete legislative initiatives to regulate transnational supply chains have been discussed or have already been politically decided in numerous countries, namely in Germany and Switzerland. This means that the legal responsibility dimension, which had initially received only limited attention in scholarship on corporate social responsibility, is thus gaining in importance.Against this backdrop, we investigate how public problem articulation and institutional problem management intertwine and how problematisation and negotiation processes in the political public sphere, in policy processes and in court contribute to a (normative) regulatory framework for transnational value chains. For this purpose, the argumentative positioning in public discourses will be reconstructed and related to the development in politics and law in Germany and Switzerland. The research project thus combines sociological, political and legal perspectives, approaches and methods in a cross-national comparative research design. The empirical investigation is based on a comparison of the regulation of transnational supply chains in Germany and Switzerland in the context of European and international law. In a further step, a discourse network analysis of actors and arguments in the debate on transnational supply chains in both countries is conducted. This will shed light on the changing issues, attributions of responsibility and actor constellations in the political public sphere. Finally, this will be complemented by the legal perspective, in which on the one hand a case law analysis and on the other hand a dogmatic and comparative law analysis of the liability conditions of multinational corporations will be conducted. The combination of the different theoretical and methodological approaches opens up the possibility of examining the problematisation and regulation of responsibility in transnational supply chains and thereby gaining new insights into the interplay of discursive and legal dimensions of corporate responsibility.