Research Seminar in Sociology of Law with Raluca Grosescu och Henry Rammelt

In this presentation, we discuss the approaches and main findings of the edited volume, Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations. Civil Society and Transnational Actions Across the World (Springer 2025), edited by Raluca Grosescu and John G. Dale. The collection explores the role, limitations, and internal fragmentation of social activism for corporate accountability across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. By adopting an actor-focused perspective and examining their national and transnational activism, the collection provides an innovative perspective across three main themes: civil society and social movements as key drivers of corporate accountability efforts; the fragmentation of the global corporate accountability movement across ontological, ideological, regional, and professional lines; the Janus-faced paradigm of transnational activism for corporate accountability. The volume argues that corporate accountability coalitions are successful, especially when social actors form alliances across borders and professional sectors. Such transnational and intersectoral engagements create counter-hegemonic discourses against corporate impunity, push for more inclusive justice projects, and multiply spaces and ideas of accountability. Yet, civil society and social movements are fragmented over the meaning, scope, and tactics of corporate accountability due to different local, national and regional contexts, ideological variations regarding human rights and economic development, diverse professional understandings of accountability processes, and differential access to resources.

Raluca Grosescu is a lecturer in politics at the National University of Political Science and Administrative Studies (Bucharest). Her research interests include corporate accountability, international law, and justice in post-dictatorial societies. She is the author of Justice and Memory after Dictatorship. Latin America, Central Eastern Europe and the Fragmentation of International Criminal Law (OUP, 2024) and the co-editor of Socialism and International Law. The Cold War and its Legacies (OUP, 2024). She currently leads the ERC-Consolidator project “Transnational Advocacy Networks and Corporate Accountability for Major International Crimes”.

Henry P. Rammelt is an associated lecturer at the National University of Political Science and Administrative Studies (Bucharest). His research interests include social movements, corporate accountability, contentious politics, and civil society. He is the author of Activistes Protestataires en Hongrie et en Roumanie (L’Harmattan, 2018) and the co-editor of Power and Protest in Central and Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). He currently leads the Romanian team of the Horizon project “ProTest - Protest as a Democracy Test: Protest Culture under Transformation and as a Transformative Power”.