The rise of globally-oriented state
ownership has emerged as a crucial issue across political, economic, and legal
planes during the past decade. Contrary to the traditional approach where state
ownership is viewed primarily through trade law, antitrust law, and corporate
law, this article discusses the
proliferating state shareholder power in relation to international human rights
law. In particular, the article interrogates
three recent U.N. human rights governance instruments by using narratives that
highlight perils, potential, and specialty of state ownership in the emerging
business and human rights agenda. It is argued that the U.N. instruments
realize the changes in the architecture of globalized state ownership, portray
it as a regulatory space, and seek to utilize this space by recalibrating
states’ private shareholder identities with public ends. At the same
time, however, the nascent human rights-based regulation of state ownership
exposes a deeper market contingency underpinning the techniques of contemporary
human rights governance.