The chapter develops the theoretical framework guiding the volume. That framework adapts the notion of an Archimedes’ Lever: that even weak actors (victims of business and human rights abuses in the Global South) with effective tools (institutional innovation) and the fulcrum in the right position (contexts favouring corporate human rights accountability), can lift up heavy weights (human rights accountability for economic actors' abuses) from under opposing forces (veto players in the business community and their allies). This ‘from below’ process challenges two existing frameworks. It first questions whether the transitional justice focus on the importance of international pressure is useful when such pressure has been very weak with regard to corporate accountability for past human rights abuses. It secondly disputes the business and human rights 'bottom up' approach that advances foreign courts in the Global North as the protagonists of corporate human rights accountability when the dynamism resides in Global South courts. The chapter introduces the set of factors that have led to corporate accountability in the world and the obstacles that have prevented it.

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