The specificity of ILO historiography

Looking at the wide range of available studies on ILO history, there are two essential characteristics. First of all, ILO history is definitely not a field that has been exclusively occupied by historians. International and industrial relations specialists, sociologists, lawyers, and labour economists have also been interested, from different perspectives and posing different research questions, in ILO history. The scope of this review article will therefore be multidisciplinary. I have included all studies that pay attention to the external-environmental and internal-organizational dimensions of the ILO and are therefore relevant for a better understanding of the organization’s history.

Secondly, the ILO has been the object of research from two angles. What I call “inside studies” are produced by the International Labour Office, the Secretariat of the International Labour Organization in Geneva, and/or by (former) ILO officials. The organization itself has produced considerable literature about its origins, evolution, functioning, and performance, often for commemorative purposes. Sengenberger and Campbell refer to “the good tradition of the ILO to use important anniversary years for review, reflection and assessment, for looking backwards and forwards”.Footnote 4 In their view, 1944 represents the ILO’s Silver Jubilee, 1969 its Golden Anniversary (when the organization was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and 1994, after seventy-five years, its Diamond Age. In many cases this “self-promotion” has been undertaken by officials, who have been personally involved in one way or another in the work of the ILO. The authors write about the ILO on the basis of their ILO engagement. This does not mean that the works discussed may not be critical, coherent, or scientifically composed, but most of these studies were specially written to expound and justify the ILO’s work and self-image.

“Outside studies” have been produced by academics who have an independent scientific position. The publications are not shaped by a personal link to the organization, but by scientific interest, based on theoretical questions and frames of reference, and an historical approach that goes beyond the institution and its own sources. This group of authors approach the institution from a more critical perspective. In a few cases, these groups cannot be strictly differentiated. A former official, Robert Cox, for instance, left the organization after a career of twenty-five years and became an eminent Professor of International Relations with a highly critical perspective on the ILO. In what follows, I will take the “inside” as well as the “outside” studies into account since both are essential and substantial to drawing general conclusions on the state of the field.

A reading of the literature reveals roughly five periods of ILO historiography with different characteristics and analytical foci. Based on this analysis of the past trends and the current state of the field, I will conclude this survey article with comments on lacunae and possible paths for future research.

The first decade: “the capricious and fantastic play of constitutional texts and social realities”Footnote 5

Studies about the ILO and its history are well available from the very beginning. ILO historiography has its origins in the “insider literature” of the 1920s. The “first-generation” producers of ILO histories were not professional historians, but often ILO leaders, labour law experts (e.g. Ernest MahaimFootnote 6), or representatives of governments (George Barnes,Footnote 7 Max LazardFootnote 8) and trade unions (Léon Jouhaux,Footnote 9 Jan OudegeestFootnote 10), who were personally involved in the founding and/or decision-making structures of the organization.Footnote 11 In the first decades it was also the International Labour Office itself that analysed and published the history of the organization,Footnote 12 for instance in 1929, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary.Footnote 13 From the beginning, academics too were interested in the ILO, especially legal scholars and political scientists. They studied the organization as a new phenomenon within the broader framework of international relations and the development of public international law.Footnote 14 A remarkable detail is that a considerable proportion of the academic literature was prefaced by (or addressed to) the first director of the ILO, Albert Thomas.

During the first years this “outsider” literature remains close to the insiders’ perspective: a very descriptive history with a formal institutional focus on the general aspects of the organization. The frame of reference is the constitutional mandate and the actual operation of the organization with its methods and means to approach international labour legislation, often in close relation to the role of the member-states.Footnote 15 Consequently, these early writings on ILO history are rather old-fashioned from a methodological point of view. They contain in many cases a table of ratifications of conventions and the full text of Part XIII of the Paris Peace Treaty, the constitutional text of the ILO, in an appendix. A significant fact is that these first publications largely pay attention to the ideological and institutional roots of the organization during the nineteenth century as a way of emphasizing its “long” history.Footnote 16

It is not coincidental that the tone of all those publications is very optimistic. Authors in the first phase shared a strong belief in the success of the ILO as part of a new multilateral system hosted in Geneva, a city of flourishing international intellectual and operational activities. They tried to explain how a peaceful world could be created and what contribution the ILO could (or should) make towards that. G.A. Johnston, an ILO official, had already written in 1924 that:

After all, the ILO was a new institution that had to prove itself and the purpose of this first phase in ILO historiography was mainly to explain what the institution was doing and how it came into being.

Not surprisingly the literature remained still very Europe-centred, as the ILO was itself. Although several important Asian and Latin American countries had already joined the organization in the early years (such as India, China, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), the ILO still remained largely dominated by “a club of like-minded states”,Footnote 18 mostly the major industrialized countries within Europe that – despite early protests from non-European members – occupied the crucial positions in decision-making (e.g. in the ILO Governing Body). This Eurocentrism is clearly reflected in the bulk of the early writings. The Latin American countries that were represented in the ILO from the beginning, such as Argentina and Chile, produced some interesting studies with a specific focus on regional problems (for instance, international migration policies).Footnote 19 However, the most significant exception to the early Eurocentrism is India. It is significant that studies on the relations between the ILO and India were published early on.Footnote 20 India, a dominion of the United Kingdom, joined the ILO as one of the very first non-European members and participated actively in the organization. But overall, non-European studies were rare.Footnote 21

All these early works are characterized by a very legitimizing concept of the institutional roots, the structure, the tasks, the raison d’être, and the mission of the organization, as well as the position and the identity of the ILO in the broader international system, in particular in its relationship with the League of Nations. Therefore, historical writing in the 1920s can be defined as an instrument of self-justification. An important pioneer in this “scholarship of legitimation” was the first Director of the ILO, the French socialist, Albert Thomas (1878–1932). As a historian himself, Thomas realized that historical knowledge was an important tool for a better understanding of the present, and an essential foundation for the ILO’s future effectiveness. In one of his earliest articles as Director of the ILO, in the International Labour Review (the flagship journal of the ILO on all aspects of the world of work) in 1921, Thomas stated that it was a crucial task for the ILO “to make known the need for and utility of the Organization, to arouse in all countries and in all circles the sympathy and faith which it requires. Where are we? What future is open to the ILO? How far will its work be effective?”.Footnote 22 That is why ILO historiography was, in the first years, so important for ILO protagonists.

The crisis of the 1930s and world war ii: “towards better things”Footnote 23

In this period, ILO historiography followed more or less the pattern of the previous decade, but against a different international background. During the turbulent time of the 1930s serious criticisms of the international system were heard. The worldwide economic crisis, mass unemployzment, and the rise of dictatorship in Europe and Latin America could not be remedied or halted by the League of Nations and the ILO. In a context of economic and political nationalism European member-states also ratified significantly less ILO conventions. The ILO and individual ILO officials responded by some écritures de defense, explaining what the organization was meant for and why and how it should continue working.Footnote 24 A combination of legitimacy and defence can also be found in the first books on the ILO Director Albert Thomas. His unexpected death in 1932, when he was still actively in charge, gave rise to the first influx of biographical literature on his life and ideas, produced by the ILOFootnote 25 as well as by outsiders.Footnote 26

While legal and political science scholars continued writing on general aspects of the organization,Footnote 27 there was growing attention in the literature towards the economic role of the ILO. It was no coincidence that the debate on the efforts of the ILO to play a more active part in shaping economic conditions took off during the crisis of the 1930s. In the first years the ILO had dealt with the social effects rather than with the causes of existing economic conditions. During the Great Depression, when it faced the challenge of excessive unemployment due to cyclical crises in capitalism, the ILO started advocating measures of monetary and credit policy, international trade, and public works, all with the purpose of stimulating economic recovery.Footnote 28

It was also no coincidence that just before and in the immediate aftermath of the long-expected entry of the United States into the ILO in 1934 the literature on the relations between Geneva and Washington grew. In the international polemic on ILO membership different arguments were highlighted. On the one hand, there were the American opponents, who often used the critique that the ILO was “a League of Nations instrument” as it was financially dependent on the League, which the Americans would never join.Footnote 29 For the American Federation of Labour (AFL), the ILO, with its double government representation, was nothing more than “a state machine”.Footnote 30 Traditionally rooted in a very pragmatic and voluntarist ethos, the AFL favoured not laws but privately negotiated contractual agreements between unions and employers without any government interference. On the other hand, the advocates of the ILO defended the decision of President Roosevelt and his labour administration to join the ILO. In the context of the New Deal social reforms it was generally thought that the ILO would be a useful instrument for the US.Footnote 31

An important protagonist in the American campaign for ILO membership was James Shotwell, a Professor of History at Columbia University and an eminent promoter of international cooperation.Footnote 32 Shotwell had attended the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 as a member of the American delegation and later chaired the American Committee on International Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. In 1934 he published his two major volumes on the origins of the ILO with the explicit motive of pushing the US government to join the organization.Footnote 33 Rather than an in-depth historical analysis, Shotwell’s volumes provide valuable source materials as they bring together an important collection of chapters written by ILO people involved in the founding process, accompanied by a rich and detailed collection of archives documents and texts (e.g. the original minutes of the Commission on International Labour Legislation that prepared the foundation of the ILO in 1919) that are useful for historians interested in the origins and early years of the ILO. One consequence of this upsurge in the literature on the new American membership was that from the 1930s onwards ILO historiography became gradually less Europe-centred.

World War II was a period of deep transition for the ILO.Footnote 34 Like the League of Nations, its existence was put into question, but the ILO managed to survive the war and find a place within the new multilateral system as a specialized agency of the United Nations. This period of reorientation of its role and position, programmatic rethinking, and adaptation to the postwar international system led to a revival in the literature, focusing explicitly on the ILO’s intention to preserve its independence and uniqueness. Looking back on the past decades, taking stock of the challenges by positioning itself at the side of the United States and Great Britain, the leading powers of that time, and looking forward to its future under the new umbrella of the UN is the main characteristic of all these publications. The analyses of both “insiders”Footnote 35 and “outsiders”Footnote 36 were still mainly institutional, focusing on the general, legal, and political consequences of the international problems of war and peace.

The first decades of the cold war (late 1940s–mid 1970s): professionalization and diversification

From an academic point of view, ILO historiography becomes more interesting and diversified from the 1950s onwards. This is remarkable. While the Cold War polarized and more or less paralysed international relations, and international organizations lost a large part of their independence, one would expect that this would lead to diminishing research interest of scholars in international organizations. But this is certainly not the case for the ILO.

On the one hand the stream of “self-promotion” continued, that is to say, the ILO’s literature of “self-identity” in the context of the organization’s tradition of contributing to its own image, albeit in the new context of postwar international relations. Former ILO officials published memoirs and autobiographies in which they shed light on personal experiences and turning points, such as the war.Footnote 37 How the ILO “turned the corner” after World War II was a popular topic,Footnote 38 as was the evolution of internal structures, e.g. on the occasion of the 100th session of the Governing Body in 1946.Footnote 39 A good deal of “inside” publication on the ILO history was brought out on the occasion of anniversaries, again ideal moments for reflection on past, present, and future achievements. In 1949 the ILO celebrated its thirty years of existence, but it was not long after the war and the move from Montreal back to Geneva was only three years earlier, so the festivities were kept quite small with a few booklets and articles in the International Labour Review.Footnote 40 In 1959 mainly outsiders published an ILO history.Footnote 41

The organization’s 50th anniversary ten years later in 1969, when the ILO received the Nobel Peace Prize, led to a veritable “explosion” of historical reviews,Footnote 42 to which former high-level ILO officials and Directors-General not surprisingly made a significant contribution.Footnote 43 It is also no coincidence that several books and articles on the relations between the ILO and its member-states were published on this occasion, quite often by the government departments (social affairs, labour administration, foreign affairs) directly involved in the ILO.Footnote 44 However, the very classical institutional history was still the predominant format, as in the publications of G.A. Johnston,Footnote 45 former Assistant Director-General, and Anthony Alcock,Footnote 46 an external researcher employed by the ILO for a history book project on the occasion of fifty years of the ILO. While Johnston is very descriptive and sticks to the official account of the organizational development and a summing-up of the major working fields, Alcock was the first to write a comprehensive study of ILO history from its origins until 1970. Despite its shortcomings (this is in the first place a chronological review and lacks, on a certain level, analytical scope), Alcock is still a valuable source of information, simply because he places the ILO and its different actors in a broader historical and international context, from the early decades to the problems of the Cold War.

On the other hand, ILO historiography after World War II went beyond the traditional institutional story. The second half of the twentieth century was characterized by a significant trend towards a more academic historiography, with a diversification in scope, research questions, and subjects. In comparison to the interwar period, studies on the ILO from the 1950s became less descriptive, but more critical and analytical. The 1950s, and especially the 1960s, can be regarded as the real take-off of in-depth scientific research on ILO history. There are two significant trends.

Firstly, there is a trend towards professionalization in historical research on the ILO. Professional historians discovered the ILO as a field of study that was, until then, almost exclusively occupied by legal scholars and political scientists specialized in international relations. This was a consequence of the changes in the field of labour history, that in itself became integrated into professional historiography after World War II.Footnote 47 A typical example of this historical professionalization is the biography of Albert Thomas by Bertus Schaper in 1953,Footnote 48 as a doctoral dissertation from the History Department of the University of Leiden, one of the first scientific and independent studies on the ILO’s first Director and therefore different from the ongoing stream of official and more hagiographic studies on Thomas.Footnote 49 This kind of professionalization not only implied the production of historical biographies (on e.g. ILO pioneers and Directors-GeneralFootnote 50), but also more attention for the ILO’s constituents from a critical-historical perspective,Footnote 51 and a reconsideration of the origins and early decades by academic researchers.Footnote 52

Secondly, research shifted from the general institutional aspects of the ILO as a whole to the analysis of actual decision-making processes within the organization. This trend was clearly influenced by new research within the field of international relations theory. There, the study of the formal arrangements of international organizations (constitutional texts, organization structures, etc.) was gradually abandoned for the analysis of patterns of influence shaping organizational outcomes.Footnote 53 Scholars opened up the “black box” of the ILO and focused explicitly on particular problems and issues such as leadership and the role of the ILO Director-General,Footnote 54 the international supervision of international labour standards,Footnote 55 the formation and functioning of the group system,Footnote 56 and bureaucratic policies.Footnote 57 Particularly relevant in this period were two studies on ILO decision-making by Ernst Haas and Robert Cox.

In Beyond the Nation-State Ernst Haas applied a neo-functionalist organization theory to the functioning and outcomes of the ILO. Neo-functionalists assigned a major role to international organizations and the role of international technocrats, not simply as passive recipients of new tasks and authority but as active agents of task expansion. They were given this role as a consequence of the failure of national states to solve substantive problems “beyond the nation-state”. With an historical overview since 1919, Haas shows the ILO as a species of institutionalized interest politics resulting from an interaction of organizational dynamics and typical actor concerns.Footnote 58

A few years later, in 1973, Robert Cox also explained the ILO’s evolution by changes in its environment, notably world politics setting the framework for (non-)action. Cox applied a “taxonomical” approach by analysing the ILO as a political system, divided into sub-systems, and developing a framework of analysis by using four variables: environment, actors, patterns of influence, and structure. Subscribing to the realist school in international relations, Cox believed that the interests of the main political powers in world politics were the most crucial determinants of the ILO’s autonomy. He concluded that the ILO was a “limited monarchy”, identifying the ILO as an organization of “low politics” (in contrast to “high politics” organizations such as the IMF and GATT), but with considerable autonomy from the member-states and a strong leadership.Footnote 59

What Haas and Cox have in common is that they cut the ILO open and dissected its anatomy in order to unravel decision-making patterns and, ultimately, to determine institutional autonomy. Although their theoretical frameworks can be criticized substantially – because of positivist determinism – these studies are still very valuable for their massive empirical research. A remarkable detail is that the studies of both Haas and Cox have been completely overlooked by the ILO itself. The International Labour Review, for instance, has never devoted a single book review to one of these academic studies. In Cox’s case, this is not surprising, since he left the ILO, as the Director of the International Institute for Labour Studies, after a dispute with the organization and the then Director-General, Wilfred Jenks, on the autonomy of the Institute and its publications.

Overall, all these new directions in ILO research were evoked by the observation of increasing discrepancies between the original constitutional designs and daily organizational practices, in a context of political tensions during the Cold War. This was also the general environment that led to a growing research interest in the power and prestige of individual states within international organizations. It will come as no surprise that, against the background of the Cold War, the United StatesFootnote 60 and the USSRFootnote 61 especially were popular research topics. Although these were definitely not the member-states that scored highly in terms of compliance in national legislation with international labour standards, the peculiar relationships between Washington and Moscow as well as with international organizations such as the ILO were interesting cases for historical analysis. The multitude of this kind of literature explains the still predominantly North-Atlantic bias in this period.

The slowly growing scholarly attention towards the non-Western world could not overcome this. A wave of decolonization that led to a massive increase in ILO membership during the 1950s and 1960s put new issues on the ILO’s political agenda and consequently also on the agenda of ILO researchers. A new line of research began concentrating on the impact on ILO work of developing countries’ membership with regard to tripartism, decision-making organs, and the orientation and content of the ILO’s work. Against the background of a growing North–South divide, parallel to the traditional East–West conflict in the heyday of the Cold War, there was a growing interest in the role of the ILO in the broad multilateral effort to establish universal human rights. The focus was, of course, on rights at work, including the formulation of several major standards (on freedom of association, social security, and non-discrimination).Footnote 62 At the core of the debate was the supposed dichotomy between universalism and diversity, or the problems of reconciling a wide international membership with the specific needs for the regions (Latin America, Asia, and Africa).Footnote 63 An important protagonist of this strand in the literature was Wilfred Jenks. As a leading official and the Director-General of the ILO between 1970 and 1973 he was directly concerned with these problems.Footnote 64

Within this cluster of literature, the issue of technical cooperation received specific attention. This third pillar of the main activities of the ILO, which was developed after World War II in parallel with standard-setting and international expertise, was conceived as an instrument of development aid.Footnote 65 But in comparison to the standard-setting tasks and legal procedures of the ILO, technical cooperation was seriously under-researched in this period. The purely legal literature still set the tone.Footnote 66 The International Labour Review, for instance, published a series of articles on the compliance of national legislation in the member-states with international labour standards.Footnote 67

From the mid 1970s until the end of the cold war: politicization and stagnation

The 1970s were a decade of strong politicization and weakened autonomy of the ILO as a consequence of the deepening polarization during the Cold War in combination with quick changes in Directors-General. In 1977 the US withdrew from the ILO for a number of interconnected reasons, denouncing the “erosion of tripartism” and the selective concern of the ILO for human rights. The immediate cause was the condemnation of Israel on the grounds of racial discrimination and violation of trade-union rights in the occupied territories and the admission of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as an observer at the International Labour Conference. The ILO suffered after the US withdrawal as it saw its budget severely reduced.

In the 1980s the Keynesian model was replaced by the so-called neo-liberal “Washington consensus”: instruments of social dialogue were questioned and social security and welfare expenditures were cut in a phase of liberalization and deregulation of the dominating global economy. In this context the ILO lost ground. It could not play a very active role because of the political divisions among its members. Not only the East–West division, but also the North–South conflict paralysed the ILO. This is clearly reflected in the state of historical research, characterized by a general disinterest in the organization’s role in world society. Some reference works were published, but they were generally characterized by a “return” to the institutional format of the earlier days.Footnote 68

Robert Cox’s Labor and Hegemony, published in 1977, the year the US withdrew from the ILO, was much more analytical and critical. Cox had left the realist school in international relations by then and shifted to a neo-Gramscian approach. He participated in the so-called “American hegemony debate” by explaining international organizations in terms of hegemonic power relations. As such, Cox defined the ILO as an international vehicle through which global power in production relations could be enhanced.Footnote 69

Self-evidently the US withdrawal in 1977 and its re-entry in 1981 gave rise to a remarkable flood of literature.Footnote 70 At the same time, there was also a renewed attention towards the American participation in the ILO in earlier decades.Footnote 71 Relations with other member-states were a classic topic for research, fairly descriptive and along the lines of traditional institutional history.Footnote 72 On the side of non-governmental actors, women and employers began to be explored as separate subjects of analysis. For instance, the ILO convention of 1951 on equal pay for men and women was at stake in the ever ongoing debate on the special protection and equal treatment of women by the ILO.Footnote 73 There was less debate on the role of employers in the ILO that has been poorly researched in comparison to that of the trade unions,. The few studies that came out were written by employers and were therefore rather personal reflections than in-depth historical analyses.Footnote 74

Since the 1990s: towards a “global” ILO history?

There has been a renewed lively research interest in diverse aspects of the ILO since the 1990s. I see two reasons for this. Firstly, after the end of the Cold War and in a new era of globalization nation-states began taking more interest in international policy coordination by multilateral structures. At the same time, the important changes in international society and the global political order revitalized the role of international organizations. These circumstances stimulated the interest of academics in international organizations, given the debate in the literature on the ILO and the social dimension of globalization, the role of international labour standards in the world trade regime, and the creation of core labour standards – these are only a few of today’s hot topics.Footnote 75

Secondly, growing research interest in the ILO was also a consequence of the transnationalization of labour history as a field of study. For a long time in the twentieth century labour historians did not look much further than national frames of reference, not paying much explicit attention to international connections, comparisons, and communities. In this scenario they tended to overlook the role of international organizations such as the ILO. But the recent trend towards globalization and the increasing importance of transnational organizations and multinational enterprises broadened labour historians’ scope to a transnational or global research level. Studying an organization that was explicitly created to transnationally regulate labour standards and relations automatically opens up the national frameworks of analysis that have traditionally been predominant. The result has been a remarkable boost in the literature. ILO history is now studied from different disciplines and with a wide variety of perspectives and themes related to its long history: for instance women’s rights and, more broadly, gender from a constructivist approach,Footnote 76 decolonization, human rights, indigenous and forced labour,Footnote 77 the role of epistemic communities, intellectuals and international expertise,Footnote 78 social security and the construction of welfare state regimes,Footnote 79 child labour,Footnote 80 and transnational networks of non-governmental actors and interest group processes,Footnote 81 in many cases looking back to the ideological and political originsFootnote 82 and the early phases (the interwar period for instance) of ILO history.Footnote 83

In order to understand the impact on nation-states of the interplay between state and non-state actors on the international level, some studies have focused on the relations between the ILO and one of its member countries. After all, the ILO is no supranational parliament totally independent from the nation-states. National governments finance the activities of the ILO and are supposed to implement its international labour standards. A few external researchers, often financed by their national governments, took the occasion of the ILO’s seventy-fifth anniversary in 1994 to undertake national case studies of the ILO from a historical perspective.Footnote 84 What these studies have in common is that they are mainly based on national archives. By not systematically exploring the international archives in Geneva they do not unravel the complexity of the context of the ILO as an international organization. Other studies have tried to overcome these shortcomings. They consider nation-states not as dominant units in world politics, but use national case studies for the analysis of the development and the real impact of the ILO as creator or disseminator of ideas and policies.Footnote 85

Drawing general conclusions based on all these studies would do harm to this wide range of multifaceted scholarship, but if there is one common thread that can be detected, then it is the broader contextual frame of reference in which the ILO is analysed. The deterministic and structuralist approach of political scientists in the 1960s and 1970s, who studied the ILO as a rather closed political system that left no room for agency and social change, was abandoned. In recent research the ILO is no longer solely regarded as a decision-making arena for nation-states, but rather as a potentially dynamic intellectual actor where long-term social change is or could be effected: in other words, as an international organization for the conceptualization, diffusion, and transmission of ideas and policies on labour issues in a broader transnational network of diverse actors, governmental and non-governmental, policy-makers, technical experts, and interest groups acting beyond the nation-state.

The wide variety of subjects, as well as the perspective of the ILO as creator or disseminator of ideas and policies, were clearly reflected in the “ILO: Past and Present” conference, organized in Brussels in October 2007. This was the first international academic forum ever organized that was entirely devoted to ILO history. The ILO’s origins and past and present achievements, failures, objectives, and future potential were assessed from a multidisciplinary perspective, albeit largely dominated by social historians. The papers presented at the conference both revisited old terrains (for instance the role of the socialist International Federation of Trade Unions, World War II, the economic depression and unemployment, and the role of the ILO’s Directors-General) and provided new facts on ILO history (for instance on the ILO’s response to political authoritarianism in Latin America and eastern Europe). Other papers dealt with topics as varied as metropolitan and non-metropolitan labour, decolonization, child labour, and explored issues that have often been neglected in traditional ILO literature: for instance, the efforts of internationally organized women and of intellectual workers to find a place within the ILO.Footnote 86 The broad scope of the conference also made it possible to evaluate the ILO’s challenges from the global political economy of the last decades. Jeffrey Harrod, for example, critically assessed the ILO’s tripartite model of labour relations that, dating back to 1919, has only represented the formal trade-union organizations and leaves no room for the growing informal sector. However, despite the wide variety of topics, the Brussels conference suffered from the same old shortcomings. Except for two contributions on Latin America and a few others on non-metropolitan labour, welfare reform in the South, and the already mentioned informal sector, the majority of the contributions focused entirely on the industrialized world. Unfortunately, one has thus to conclude that ILO history is still not “global history”.

It is clear from this overview that academic and, more specifically, historical scholarship has taken over the leading role from the “insider” literature of the early decades. This does not mean that historical studies produced by the ILO itself have completely disappeared. The seventy-fifth anniversary in 1994 was once more an occasion to look at the organization’s past,Footnote 87 including some good reviews of the Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944.Footnote 88

Long-term shifts and future challenges

ILO history as a field of study has had its ups and downs over the past ninety years. Different shifts and general characteristics help to explain the current state of the field. Firstly, the relationship between “inside” and “outside” literature on ILO history has changed significantly over the course of time. Originally, ILO staff paved the way, which resulted in the classical institutional history, an official account of organizational development and a summing-up of the major working fields, often for commemorative purposes. Legal scholars and political scientists gradually took over for a long period, before professional historians came into the picture, stimulated by a trend towards a more academic (since the 1950s and 1960s) and globalizing labour history (since the 1990s). This professionalization in ILO history broadened as well as deepened ILO historiography. The focus shifted away from the “architecture” of the ILO and its procedures towards the broader transnational context and the networks of actors in which the ILO was functioning.

Consequently the gap between in-house and scholarly attention to the ILO has widened over the course of time. This is a second shift. Whereas in the early decades it was not at all unusual that books written on the ILO by academics were prefaced by the ILO’s Director, the ILO’s knowledge of its own past (as well as knowledge of academic developments regarding the history of the ILO) has become gradually limited in more recent decades. The classic studies of Ernst Haas and Robert Cox exemplify this evolution. Bridging the gap between in-house and academic attention towards the ILO is therefore a real challenge for the recently launched ILO Century Project, involving both ILO staff and academic scholars.Footnote 89 Not surprisingly, this project also has a strong commemorative dimension, looking forward to the centenary in 2019. A first stage in this project will commemorate the ninetieth anniversary in 2009, focusing on the impact of ILO ideas on social development.

Scientific research into an international organization such as the ILO cannot be undertaken in a vacuum, but has to take into account the international context at the time. Thirdly, the assumption that “the fate of the field reflects the fate of the world” is, in the case of the ILO, certainly true for the period up to World War II (an explosion of work after 1919, followed by a period of more cautious reassessment approaching the 1930s) and for recent decades, but definitely not for the postwar period until the late 1960s. The heyday of the Cold War, in an international context of East–West tension, stimulated a more critical and analytical approach to research on the ILO.

The fourth conclusion is that ILO historiography suffers from “geographical narrowness”. Although the ILO is an international organization that explicitly aims to promote minimum labour standards worldwide, ILO historiography has been, until now, largely dominated by scholars from the the North Atlantic and the developed world. This is, of course, no coincidence. Between the two world wars, the ILO was largely dominated by European countries and in this period the literature definitely is a reflection of this “old boys’ network” of European founding fathers. While a lot of attention was paid to the United States and the Soviet Union, related to the problems of universal membership and the case of freedom of association in the context of the Cold War, there was for a long time no comparable interest in the regions in the South, although the ILO significantly expanded its membership to a large group of developing countries after decolonization. India is to a certain extent an exception, but here too, the field was largely dominated by people personally related to the work and world of the ILO. Overall, the ILO’s role and regional activities in the non-Western world still need a lot of further in-depth research. Here the problem of the availability and accessibility of sources comes into the picture. In my opinion, written sources, only to a certain extent available in ILO regional offices, should be combined with oral sources. In recent years, oral history has become popular for research into the southern hemisphere, with the encouragement of the International Institute of Social History, for example.

Turning to new research paths in ILO history, one topic could be an investigation into the impact of ILO regional offices on the regions, as well as on headquarters policy in Geneva. In South Africa this could be tested for the case of apartheid, in which the ILO took on the protection of black workers. South Africa was forced out of the ILO in 1963 after a period of moves by African delegates to condemn the country for its ongoing apartheid. In connection with this, an interesting enquiry could be into what ways events within the ILO contributed to the UN launching the convention on the elimination of racial discrimination in 1965. This leads on to the question of relations between the ILO and other international organizations, governmental as well as non-governmental, at the global level. In this perspective, a history of the ILO and global migration, by integrating the story of the International Migration Organization,Footnote 90 would be a challenge for labour historians. And within the realm of development studies, a history of the ILO and global development strategies in the long run opens up other interesting research paths (e.g. from the ILO Andean programme of the late 1940s through the World Employment Program in the early 1970s to the recent Decent Work Agenda). In this case the emphasis would be on technical cooperation, strongly under-researched in comparison with the ILO as as a standard-setting organization.Footnote 91

There are, of course, a lot of other missing pieces in the puzzle of ILO history. Looking at the unequal treatment of the ILO tripartite constituents, there is definitely an urgent need for in-depth academic research on the employers’ side that has been far less studied than the role of trade unions. It is significant that in recent years only one overview – rather a coffee-table book on the institutional development of the International Organization of Employers than a thorough historical analysis – was brought out by an old President of the OIE.Footnote 92 Consequently, it will come as no surprise that the ILO and multinational corporations is a blank research field.

Within the broader network of transnational actors a lot has been said about labour and to a lesser extent liberal internationalism. On the side of Catholic social organizations, research on the ILO and the Christian working class is far less popular.Footnote 93 One reason is the dominance of the socialist International Federation of Trade Unions in the ILO’s Workers’ Group in the first half of the twentieth century. In this light it would be interesting to know more about the (development of the) relationship between the ILO and the Catholic Church, after all both universal-international organizations. Formal relations with the Vatican were established initially by the ILO’s first Director, Albert Thomas, in the early 1920s.Footnote 94 Of the ILO and other world religions (and the quite powerful freemasonry in international circles) virtually nothing is known.

Given the evident problems with common sources, here again oral history would be very helpful, as it would be for analysis of electoral politics in the ILO (and international organizations in general). The campaigns led by candidates running for Director-General, for instance, leave practically no traces in the archives. It is here that memoirs and (auto)biographies of (former) ILO officials and Directors-General could be useful.Footnote 95 The biographical genre especially offers an interesting insight into organizations.Footnote 96 Representatives of national governments, trade-unionists, employers and – even more – officials in international bureaucracy are very often represented as invisible and anonymous actors promoting social change. Biographies give these actors a “human face” by throwing light on the people struggling with their idea(l)s and minor shortcomings within an international context. Albert Thomas has always been a rewarding subject for biographers.Footnote 97 Currently a biography on David Morse, ILO Director-General between 1948 and 1970, is being completed.Footnote 98 Morse’s successor, Wilfred Jenks, is, however, still waiting for an academic biographer. Although very briefly in charge (as Director-General between 1970 and 1973), he had a life-long career in the ILO, producing a long series of interesting writings, not only on the ILO but with a much wider and theoretical perspective on international relations that deserves more attention from historians and other researchers interested in the history of the ILO.Footnote 99

Overall, in writing the history of the ILO, it is crucial never to lose sight of the organization’s main subject, working people themselves. Ignoring in our research the basic question of what the ILO ultimately meant for the working conditions and lives of millions of men, women, and children worldwide results in a dry institutional historiography devoid of its human link to the real world of work.