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Social Dialogue, Governance and Socio-Economic Performance
Following up on research initiated in the 2002-03 biennium, the Institute's research programme investigated the process through which policies aimed at promoting the decent work strategic objectives are designed and implemented. In the 2004- 05 biennium, research will focus on social dialogue, a key concept for the ILO, and will seek to link social dialogue with the burgeoning debate on governance.
Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in governance in academic and policy circles. While there is no precise definition, the notion of governance is generally used to signal that policy-making is (or should be) broader than the formal structures of government. The literature on governance draws attention to the fact that policy-making, i.e. the purposeful steering of the economy and society, involves networks of public and private actors rather than public actors alone.
The project on "Social Dialogue, Governance and Socio-Economic Performance" aims at systematically understanding the different ways in which social dialogue arrangements at the national level contribute to a key aspect of governance, i.e. successful integration in the international economy. This section of the research project will be conducted in close collaboration with the InFocus Programme on Strengthening Social Dialogue, Labour Law and Labour Administration.
There are reasons to believe that countries which have accompanied economic liberalization with the constitution of social dialogue structures have achieved better results than others. Economic reform may be better sustained in countries where social dialogue institutions guarantee buy-in from the key social actors. Also, policies that are negotiated with the social partners may be better able to reconcile efficiency and equity than policies that are imposed from above. For example, consultations with the key social actors may lead to a more gradual and efficient sequencing of the liberalization process. Finally, social dialogue structures may provide national policy-makers with additional degrees of freedom at a time when their discretion is severely limited by international constraints.
While there are various channels through which social dialogue structures may contribute to successful economic integration, there is little systematic evidence on these issues, particularly for developing countries. Yet these questions are at the heart of the ILO's Decent Work Agenda. It is necessary to determine some of the conditions under which countries can benefit from the global economy, and to substantiate one of the ILO's key claims, namely that social dialogue generates policies that are not only desirable for their normative properties but also for their socio-economic consequences.
This project aims at analysing the challenges of economic integration in countries with different institutional configurations. The research will be based on case studies in various geopolitical areas (e.g. Latin America, Africa, South-East Asia, transition economies). The goal is to understand whether social dialogue institutions alter the conditions in which the process of economic liberalization takes place; whether it is true, as hypothesized, that socio-economic outcomes are better when social dialogue structures are in place; and, if so, the causal channels through which these effects are produced. Another goal of the study is to examine whether the effects of social dialogue structures are uniform across different socio-political regimes. Research will be based on interviews with key actors (governments, unions and employers) and secondary sources.
The research project builds on earlier studies on governance carried out in the previous biennium, which focused on the role and effectiveness of civil society organizations in promoting the decent work strategic objectives. One element of the previous research programme will continue to be investigated in the 2004-05 biennium. This has to do with global multi-stakeholder networks. These network structures focus on transnational policy areas (e.g. ethical trade, corporate social responsibility and social and environmental sustainability) and seem to help build consensus in various multidimensional policy areas. This portion of the research programme complements the former, which focuses on the national level, by investigating the emergence of social governance institutions at the supranational level as well.
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