Reporting Compliance: How ILO Reports Improves Collective Labor Rights

• In Event: International Collaboration on Economic Issues

Abstract

Can international organizations (IOs) with weak enforcement mechanisms lead to meaningful compliance? Existing literature has long debated the relationship between institutional design on enforcement and the cooperative outcome: Organizations with few means to enforce their mandates are often theorized to struggle in seeking behavioral changes from member states. This paper challenges this conventional view by highlighting a feature of IOs beyond enforcement strength: Reporting institutions. IO reporting is a key process through which treaty organizations can extract both public and private information from member states. IOs collect and examine information on the level of states’ actual compliance and change states’ behaviors. Consequently, even when an IO is constrained in its enforcement capacity, it can still affect compliance when its reporting practices unveil domestic information from member states. To test this argument, I adopt a mixed-method approach under the institutional context of the International Labor Organization (ILO): First, I compare two monitoring strategies employed by the ILO using difference-in-differences and two-way fixed effects models. I collect member states' convention ratification records and their reports for freedom of association complaints between 1985-2012 in the ILO and find heterogeneous effects in improving labor protection. Then, using archival evidence between the ILO and China, I map out how the gradual deepening of compliance follows from the monitoring strategies that brought the pair into dialogue and contention.

Author

• Ruofan Ma, Harvard University