This chapter explores how accountability barriers can be overcome. First, it contrasts transitional justice accountability efforts with regard to state and rebel actors with corporate accountability efforts. It explores why the same international pressure that played such a crucial role in advancing accountability in such contexts has not emerged in corporate accountability efforts. It also looks at veto players and examine why their power was reduced in those efforts, and are so strong in corporate accountability.

Second, it examines conceptually when and why local efforts can overcome the absence of international pressure and the power of the corporate veto to advance accountability. It discusses the significance of domestic actors over international ones bridging two previously unconnected literatures: transitional justice and business and human rights approaches.

The concluding section develops the Archimedes’ lever analogy for corporate accountability from below, establishing scope conditions, key actors and factors at work. It contends that corporate accountability from below is not merely an abstract analytical exercise. It is one grounded in, and in dialogue with, empirical, comparative, and historical analyses. It further aims to sharpen, refine, adapt, and make accessible to corporate accountability advocates, a set of tools to advance corporate accountability.