Reporting Compliance: How Reporting Mechanisms in the ILO Shape Labor Rights

• In Event: Workers, Robots, and International Political Economics

Abstract

Do international reports lead to state compliance? If so, how? This paper examines the variation in the design of IOs' reporting mechanisms. Reporting mechanisms are a key process through which IOs can obtain information from member states, evaluate their performance, and publicize the findings via reports. These processes can thus reveal the level of states’ actual compliance and generate pressure for improvements. Consequently, even when an IO is constrained in its enforcement capacity, it can still affect compliance in a target state when its reporting practices generate novel information that mobilizes other member states. In particular, I argue that a crucial design feature that determines the effectiveness of the reporting mechanism is its accessibility for non-state actors, whose private knowledge both allows the IO to verify states' self-claim of compliance and provide more tailored advice on how to resolve noncompliance. 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 177 member states' convention ratification records and their reports for freedom of association complaints between 1985-2012. I find that ILO reports significantly improve member states' labor standards, although their effectiveness depends on the reports' information content. Then, using two case studies of Cambodia and China, I provide evidence that the deepening of compliance follows from going through the report-compilation process, which brought the states and the ILO into dialogue.

Author

• Ruofan Ma, Harvard University