Community, Authority, Power: Three times epistemic, but what fits the International Labour Organisation?

Abstract

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a well-known standard setting organization in the world of work. With its standards the ILO has created an epistemic community for labour law and social security law. Central to this paper though is the question whether the ILO is also an epistemic authority or even an epistemic power. To assess this, the main activities of the ILO are described in this paper. The descriptions are made against the background of the idea of discursive diffusion, which could be typified as governance technique to influence the policies or behaviour of the members of an epistemic community. In the conclusion it is argued that the ILO can definitely be qualified as an epistemic authority, and even holds some traces of epistemic power. However, most of the activities that could make up for the ILO’s epistemic power are executed in the ILO’s field offices. We know not enough about the modus operandi in those field offices, therefore further, preferably qualitative empirical research would be needed.