The impact of ILO conventions on worker rights: Are empty promises worse than no promises?

Peksen, Dursun; Blanton, Robert G.

doi:10.1007/s11558-015-9241-9

Cited by 41 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…First, while previous research established that free-market policies undermine socio-economic rights (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2007;Blanton, Blanton, and Peksen 2015;Blanton and Peksen 2016), our study demonstrates that IMF conditionality frequently includes measures requiring countries to reform rigid labor markets, and that these policy conditions effectively reduce labor rights. Second, our findings offer important lessons for compliance studies (Holzinger, Knill, and Sommerer 2008;Peksen and Blanton 2016;Simmons 2000). Policy convergence occurs only when external pressure eliminates policy discretion for borrowing governments, notably by explicitly including policy conditions to deregulate labor markets as a precondition for IMF loans.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Furthermore, the political ideology of the government may affect protection of labor rights due to different partisan preferences. Previous studies suggest that leftist governments are more responsive to labor movements and therefore are more likely to legally protect labor rights (Berliner et al 2015;Peksen and Blanton 2016). We hence include a binary measure for LEFT-WING GOVERNMENTS, drawn from the Database of Political Institutions (Beck et al 2001).…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Past literature has varied with regard to the former. At least three papers include country fixed effects (Berliner et al 2015; Cole 2013; Davies and Vadlamannati 2013), while many other studies (partially) pool observations and base inference on panel-corrected standard errors (Greenhill, Mosley, and Prakash 2009;Mosley and Uno 2007;Peksen and Blanton 2016). Since we are interested in explaining within-country variation in the protection of labor rights, we use fixedeffects estimation.…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions

Reinsberg

Stubbs

Kentikelenis

et al. 2019

International Interactions

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This study examines the relationship between policy interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and de jure labor rights. Combining two novel datasets with unprecedented country-year coverage-leximetric data on labor laws and disaggregated data on IMF conditionality-our analysis of up to 70 developing countries from 1980 to 2014 demonstrates that IMF-mandated labor market policy measures significantly reduce both individual and collective labor rights. Once we control for the effect of labor market policy measures, however, we find that collective labor rights increase in the wake of IMF programs. We argue that this result is explained by the impact of union pressure on governments which, in such a context, are imbued with the policy space to respond to domestic interest groups. The study has broader theoretical implications as to when international organizations are effective in constraining governments' choices.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions

Reinsberg

Stubbs

Kentikelenis

et al. 2019

International Interactions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Though such treaties are not sufficient in themselves to prevent industrial accidents, our findings imply that, at a minimum, respect for international laws related to labor rights—at least in terms of ratifying core treaties—does translate into increased concern for worker safety. While the ultimate impact of treaties is often viewed with skepticism, our findings indicate that such “empty promises” (Peksen and Blanton, ; Hafner‐Burton and Tsutsui, ), may be of some value regarding worker safety.…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Dying for Globalization? The Impact of Economic Globalization on Industrial Accidents

Blanton

Peksen

2017

Social Science Quarterly

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Objectives. Industry-related accidents are tragically ubiquitous events, yet their underlying causes remain poorly understood. We focus on an important factor associated with the likelihood of industrial hazards: economic globalization. Specifically, we advance multiple hypotheses that suggest that global economic ties as well as the policies that are intended to facilitate these ties increase the likelihood of major industrial accidents as they induce poor governance and the violation of worker safety and regulations. Methods. We combine data on economic globalization with data on major industrial accidents, and examine the relationship between these variables across 137 countries for the period 1971-2012. Results. We find a significant positive relationship between economic globalization and the probability of industrial accidents. Results further suggest that the impact of state policies encouraging globalization, such as the removal of barriers to trade and capital flows, is stronger than that of trade and investment flows themselves. Conclusions. Our results show that a contradiction may exist between the pursuit of integration into the global economy and a key labor right-the right to a safe workplace-and suggest that pro-globalization policies may exacerbate the governance challenges associated with accident prevention.

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“…Given the centrality of the ILO to the global labour regime, we also include an ILO Convention Ratification variable that controls for the number of core ILO conventions adopted by a country in a given year (Peksen & Blanton ) . The data come from the ILO's NORMLEX database .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic liberalisation, market institutions and labour rights

Blanton

Peksen

2016

European Journal of Political Research

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What effect do pro‐market economic policies have on labour rights? Despite significant debate in policy and academic circles about the consequences of economic liberalisation, little is known about the labour rights effects of pro‐market policies. Extant literature has focused only on the possible outcomes of market‐liberalising policies, such as trade and investment flows, rather than directly assessing market‐friendly policies and institutions. Moreover, this line of research has found mixed results on how these outcomes influence labour conditions. To provide a comprehensive assessment of this linkage, this article combines data on five distinct policy areas associated with economic liberalisation with data on labour rights for the period 1981–2012. The results indicate that pro‐market policies – except the ones involving rule of law and secure property rights – undermine labour rights. Thus while there are some positive economic and political outcomes associated with market‐supporting policies, economic liberalisation comes at the cost of respect for labour rights.

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The impact of ILO conventions on worker rights: Are empty promises worse than no promises?

Cited by 41 publications

References 47 publications

The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions

The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions

Dying for Globalization? The Impact of Economic Globalization on Industrial Accidents

Economic liberalisation, market institutions and labour rights

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