Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GLOBALVALUE (Global Value Chain Law: Constituting Connectivity, Contracts and Corporations)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-01-01 al 2025-06-30
European Research Council Advanced Grant:
Global Value Chain Law: Constituting Connectivity, Contracts and Corporations (GLOBALVALUE)
Global Value Chains (GVCs) serves as central infrastructures of the global economy and global society. While the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions might have been a revelation in this respect, the centrality of GVCs dates back to the dawn of colonialism.
Both historically and in contemporary times, GVCs produces profound environmental and socio-economic externalities in jurisdictions often incapable of or unwilling to effectively regulate abhorrent working conditions and environmental degradation. Hence, the question of how to legally regulate cross-border economic processes including the capability of democratically organised political processes to effectively regulate GVCs is a central legal problem within fields such as competition, contract and corporate law as well as environmental, human rights and labour law.
Until recently, voluntary soft law measures were the preferred regulatory tools in relation to GVCs. In the last few years, a decisive move towards hard national (e.g. in France and Germany) and EU regulation has however taken place thereby raising the question to what extent this changes the rules of the game.
On this backdrop, GLOBALVALUE develops a novel and systematic socio-legal approach to GVC Law. This is done in a threefold manner:
Firstly, through a historical sociological reconstruction of GVC Law going back to colonial law countering the currently dominant ahistorical approaches to GVC Law.
Secondly, through three comprehensive case studies in relation to the global pharmaceutical, wine and trade fairs industries. Spanning six continents and a dozen national jurisdictions the case studies will illuminate the effects of contemporary hard and soft law practices of GVC law.
Thirdly, through the development of a new concise conceptuality of GVC law with direct implications for our understanding of core legal concepts such as contract, legal order and economic constitutionalism.
The project is organized in three work packages:
WP 1 engages in a systematic tracking of the origins and sources of GVC Law through a tracking and analysis of the conceptual-historical origin of contemporary regulation of global value chains with a particular focus on the relation to colonial law. The analysis transverses categories such as public/private; regional/national/international/transnational; direct/indirect relevance and soft/hard law, and encompass concrete principles and norms such as accountability, dignity, principles of source and domicile, responsibility, rules of origin, sustainability, and transparency.
WP 2 analyses the praxes, instruments and norms of GVC Law within three specific GVCs: The global pharmaceutical, wine and trade fairs industries.
WP 3 develops a concise conceptuality of GVC Law through theory development asking questions such the implications of GVC regulation for the concept of contract, normative order, legal order, economic constitutionalism, extra-territoriality and territorial extension as well as the implications of GVC law for our understanding of democracy and global society.
Team
Poul F Kjaer – Professor (Principal Investigator)
Martin Skrydstrup – Associate Professor
Francesco Corradini – Postdoc
Luisa Teresa Hedler Ferreira – Postdoc
Jacob Hjortsberg – Postdoc
Negar Mansouri – Postdoc
Pedro Henrique Carlos – PhD Researcher
Alix Blanchard – External PhD Researcher
Global Value Chain Law: Constituting Connectivity, Contracts and Corporations (GLOBALVALUE)
Global Value Chains (GVCs) serves as central infrastructures of the global economy and global society. While the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions might have been a revelation in this respect, the centrality of GVCs dates back to the dawn of colonialism.
Both historically and in contemporary times, GVCs produces profound environmental and socio-economic externalities in jurisdictions often incapable of or unwilling to effectively regulate abhorrent working conditions and environmental degradation. Hence, the question of how to legally regulate cross-border economic processes including the capability of democratically organised political processes to effectively regulate GVCs is a central legal problem within fields such as competition, contract and corporate law as well as environmental, human rights and labour law.
Until recently, voluntary soft law measures were the preferred regulatory tools in relation to GVCs. In the last few years, a decisive move towards hard national (e.g. in France and Germany) and EU regulation has however taken place thereby raising the question to what extent this changes the rules of the game.
On this backdrop, GLOBALVALUE develops a novel and systematic socio-legal approach to GVC Law. This is done in a threefold manner:
Firstly, through a historical sociological reconstruction of GVC Law going back to colonial law countering the currently dominant ahistorical approaches to GVC Law.
Secondly, through three comprehensive case studies in relation to the global pharmaceutical, wine and trade fairs industries. Spanning six continents and a dozen national jurisdictions the case studies will illuminate the effects of contemporary hard and soft law practices of GVC law.
Thirdly, through the development of a new concise conceptuality of GVC law with direct implications for our understanding of core legal concepts such as contract, legal order and economic constitutionalism.
The project is organized in three work packages:
WP 1 engages in a systematic tracking of the origins and sources of GVC Law through a tracking and analysis of the conceptual-historical origin of contemporary regulation of global value chains with a particular focus on the relation to colonial law. The analysis transverses categories such as public/private; regional/national/international/transnational; direct/indirect relevance and soft/hard law, and encompass concrete principles and norms such as accountability, dignity, principles of source and domicile, responsibility, rules of origin, sustainability, and transparency.
WP 2 analyses the praxes, instruments and norms of GVC Law within three specific GVCs: The global pharmaceutical, wine and trade fairs industries.
WP 3 develops a concise conceptuality of GVC Law through theory development asking questions such the implications of GVC regulation for the concept of contract, normative order, legal order, economic constitutionalism, extra-territoriality and territorial extension as well as the implications of GVC law for our understanding of democracy and global society.
Team
Poul F Kjaer – Professor (Principal Investigator)
Martin Skrydstrup – Associate Professor
Francesco Corradini – Postdoc
Luisa Teresa Hedler Ferreira – Postdoc
Jacob Hjortsberg – Postdoc
Negar Mansouri – Postdoc
Pedro Henrique Carlos – PhD Researcher
Alix Blanchard – External PhD Researcher
Our opening conference took place 17 – 19 January 2024. The conference was organised together with partners from Harvard Law School and Sciences Po Law School and had 50 high level academic speakers from all continents and a public event with several hundred participants.
In addition, two two-day high-level workshops have been held. One in June 2024 as a as a team building exercise with select external partners. It was used to present and discuss drafts of both the collective and individual research plans and obtain additional input. The second one, entitled Making Global Value Chains Visible Problems, Positions and Possibilities for Experimental Ethnographies took place in August 2024 and focused on the preparation of field studies and especially ethics related challenges in that regard. The workshop included top level specialist on ethics issues in ethnographic field studies from Denmark, Switzerland and the UK and resulted in a creation of a 25 page team manual for conducting case studies.
Overall the project advances on all dimensions with a strong focus on the origin of the legal conceptuality of GVC law, notions of time and space in GVC law and case studies on the pharma, wine and trade fair sectors in with field work so far carried out in Australia, Brazil, Singapore and United Arab Emirates.
In addition, two two-day high-level workshops have been held. One in June 2024 as a as a team building exercise with select external partners. It was used to present and discuss drafts of both the collective and individual research plans and obtain additional input. The second one, entitled Making Global Value Chains Visible Problems, Positions and Possibilities for Experimental Ethnographies took place in August 2024 and focused on the preparation of field studies and especially ethics related challenges in that regard. The workshop included top level specialist on ethics issues in ethnographic field studies from Denmark, Switzerland and the UK and resulted in a creation of a 25 page team manual for conducting case studies.
Overall the project advances on all dimensions with a strong focus on the origin of the legal conceptuality of GVC law, notions of time and space in GVC law and case studies on the pharma, wine and trade fair sectors in with field work so far carried out in Australia, Brazil, Singapore and United Arab Emirates.
It is too early to talk about major breakthroughs, but the project has clearly advanced the state of the art by providing a new conceptual framework for value chain law and linking insights, research traditions and schools so far unconnected. E.g. elements of competition, contract, corporate, environmental, human rights and labor law effectively establishing a new field of enquiry and a new object of study.