Industrial states and transnational exchanges of social policies: Belgium and the ILO in the interwar period

The article explores the role and impact of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a transnational regulator of social policies. Key argument is that, first, the networks of the actors directly involved in the ILO largely determined the success or failure of the organization, and, second, the ideas, motives and strategies of these actors differed, depending on policy preferences and the political and economic reality of the day. While after World War I the locus of power for governments and employers was on the level of the national state, trade unions oriented themselves with the largest expectations towards the international level. Empirical evidence will be derived from the case of the Belgian trade unions, employers and government in the making and implementation of two ILO conventions: the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention (1919) and the Forced Labour Convention (1930). The analysis of the issues at stake in these two conventions, i.e. respectively labour in the industrialized and non-industrialized world, will throw light on the policy priorities (or non-priorities) of industrial states in the ILO during the interwar period