Civil Society Strikes Back: How Global South Coalitions Are Shaping Corporate Accountability in the Age of Mandatory Due Diligence

This article examines how civil society organizations (CSOs) in the Global South perceive and leverage European supply chain regulations to hold companies accountable for negative externalities in their global value chains. While previous studies highlight perceptions of these regulations as a unilateral European imposition that marginalizes Global South stakeholders, the regulatory agency of CSOs in producing countries remains underexplored. We develop an analytical framework for studying this agency across different stages of accountability. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil, we show how diverse Brazilian CSOs largely support mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence regulations. Despite differing political agendas and experiences with transnational governance, they shape outcomes by participating in lawmaking, improving traceability and monitoring, and contributing to enforcement. Although long-term effects remain uncertain, we identify two intermediate consequences: mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence has fostered institutional innovations in Brazil and strengthened collaborations between international and national CSOs. This study advances debates on corporate accountability and global supply chain governance.