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- Title
The Fight to Globalize Labor: Understanding the Role of Activists in the Spread of International Norms.
- Authors
Wolf, Andrew B.
- Abstract
International relations scholars have traditionally focused on state‐centered accounts of international legal norm development between nations while sociolegal scholars have focused on Weberian notions of occupational authority. This study advances a constructivist sociolegal approach emphasizing activist action as playing a unique role in shaping international norms. Specifically, this study investigates labor activists' intervention in U.S. bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) to examine why labor activists chose to initiate FTA disputes as a social movement tactic and how strategic interaction with international legal systems has helped them institutionalize and proliferate the International Labor Organizations' core labor standards. Through semi‐structured interviews with legal, union, and government officials, alongside a content analysis of cases filed under the U.S. FTA system, this study shows the role activists played in advancing "globalized" standards in international law. This study finds that activists spread norms through a gradual mechanism of accretion, which focuses on the creation of standards and international legal standing over the individual outcomes of any given case.
- Subjects
LABOR movement; FREE trade; GLOBALIZATION; INTERNATIONAL relations; SOCIAL constructionism; LABOR activists; FREE trade laws; FOREIGN relations of the United States
- Publication
Law & Society Review, 2020, Vol 54, Issue 3, p607
- ISSN
0023-9216
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/lasr.12496