Does responsibility matter in domestic discourses on human rights due diligence legislation? Analyzing interest groups’ discourse on Germany’s Supply Chain Act

The norm of responsibility plays a key role in global policy debates. Although its relevance for states and corporations has been well studied—through norms of ethical foreign policy and corporate social responsibility—the use of responsibility by domestic actors such as interest groups remains underexplored. Although scholarship agrees that states, the public, and societal actors and businesses use responsibility as an important reference point for their own decision-making processes, little is known about interest groups and nongovernmental organizations using the norm of responsibility in attempts to influence policy. Is responsibility a key argument to sway decision makers, or do other topics dominate? This article addresses that gap by examining how interest groups invoked the norm of responsibility in Germany’s public discourse surrounding the Supply Chain Act (Lieferkettengesetz), a landmark piece of human rights due diligence legislation. Using discourse analysis of national media articles during the legislative debate, we investigated rhetorical strategies of business associations, public interest groups, and companies. We found that most actors appealed to responsibility, though in varied ways: Business interest groups primarily deflected responsibility through relational arguments, whereas public interest groups and companies supporting the bill emphasized moral obligation and culpability. Our findings show that responsibility serves as a key argumentative resource in domestic policy debates surrounding human rights and that interest groups use different responsibility frames to advance their positions.