This article is dedicated to analysis of the traditionalist agenda, promoted by Russia, in recent debates in the United Nations Human Rights Council (‘Traditional values’ from 2009 to 2013, ‘Protection of the family’ from 2014 to 2017). The traditionalist agenda could be interpreted as yet another chapter of contextualist opposition to the universalist application human of rights and as a successor to the cultural relativism in human rights promoted in the past by the Organization of Islamic States or countries from the Global South. This article seeks to challenge such an interpretation and instead makes the argument that the traditionalist agenda employs novel aspects of illiberal norm protagonism in the human rights sphere. The article undertakes an in-depth analysis of the discourse coalitions of both supporters and opponents of the traditionalist agenda, using the tools of discourse analysis in international relations and drawing on a constructivist approach to norm diffusion in international organisations.

Existing discussions about shareholder control work with a state-centric and Westphalian conception of democracy. Therefore, they see the corporation as a state-analogue: shareholders (citizens) elect a board (legislature) charged with the responsibility to ensure that the executive follows their ‘collective interest’. We claim that state-centric models of democracy are not apt for an environment of corporate governance characterised by complex interdependence, porous boundaries, and criss-crossing relations of weak allegiances. Instead, we suggest that recent theories of transnational democracy provide us with better models for thinking about ‘popular’ control in such an environment. We look at shareholder democracy not as a system where a single body representing a ‘demos’ tries to control a single executive; instead, we view shareholders as constituting multiple dêmoi which must coordinate and collaborate to control multiple corporate executives. We emphasise deliberation and communicative power as a central mechanism for these dêmoi of shareholders to effectuate control.