Engineering Social Peace: Networks, Ideas, and the Founding of the International Labour Organization

Abstract

In 1919 a pioneering generation of scholars, social policy experts, and politicians designed an unprecedented international organizational framework for labour politics. The majority of the founding fathers of this new institution, the International Labour Organization (ILO), had made great strides in social thought and action before 1919. The core members all knew one another from earlier private professional and ideological networks, where they exchanged knowledge, experiences, and ideas on social policy. In this study, one key question is the extent to which prewar “epistemic communities”, such as the International Association for Labour Legislation (IALL), and political networks, such as the Second International, were a decisive factor in the institutionalization of international labour politics. In the postwar euphoria, the idea of a “makeable society” was an important catalyst behind the social engineering of the ILO architects. As a new discipline, international labour law became a useful instrument for putting social reforms into practice. This article also deals with how the utopian idea(l)s of the founding fathers – social justice and the right to decent work – were changed by diplomatic and political compromises made at the Paris Peace Conference. The article thus reflects the dual relationship between idealism and pragmatism.

Assembling an international social protection for the migrant: Juridical categorization in ILO migration standards, 1919–1939

“…The production of public knowledge – books, pamphlets, and conference reports – was central to the process by which amorphous categories such as ‘social progress’ and ‘social economy’ came to operate as a common-sense repertoire for transnational reform networks during this period (Rodgers, 2009). And this common language provided the basis for a distinctive internationalized social politics aiming to address apparently comparable problems across diverse regulatory contexts, a project in which the ILO featured prominently (Kott, 2012; Van Daele, 2005).…”

Working time limits at sea, a hundred-year construction

“…Born in the aftermath of the first world war (WWI), the ILO emerged as a reformist response to workers' pressure expressed during the war (e.g., Conference of Leeds in 1916 and Berne in 1917) and to moderate social anger exemplified by post-war uprisings [ 5 , [27] , [28] , [29] , [30] ]. The preamble of the ILO Constitution linking peace and social justice also highlighted the urgent need to improve working conditions and, inter alia , "[…] hours of work, including the establishment of a maximum working day and week […]".…”

The historical development of labour standards

“…Research that has not failed to consider historical perspectives has tended to focus attention on specific countries, periods or institutions (Castles, 1985;Korpi, 1983;Esping-Andersen, 1990;Ferrera, 1996;van der Linden & Price, 2000;Van Daele, 2005; Van Daele, Garcia, Van Goethem & van der Linden, 2010). These works usually do not identify general trends and patterns that influenced the development of labour standards across time and space (within and across territorial boundaries).…”