International organisations: policy agendas and transfer mechanisms in global labour governance

Abstract

For more than a century, international organisations have been interested in developing blueprints on labour market policy and employment regulations. This chapter studies the evolution of these institutions in the past four decades, focused on their contribution to global labour governance, i.e. the collective efforts to manage labour conditions made by transnational actors. The study looks at four organisations -the ILO, OECD, WB and IMF-to analyse their respective policy agendas on work and employment. The argument is that they possess different transfer mechanisms to influence policymaking at the national and local levelswhich go from softer forms associated to ideational factors to harder mechanisms like financial conditionalities. Even though international institutions pursue their own mandates, they tend to focus on the same global agendas. The chapter indicates also how these four organisations have recently converged around specific policy models, such as the flexicurity approach in labour market policy.