Functional Representation in the International Labor Organization

Abstract

A bloc system has superimposed itself upon national legislatures. Although their members are elected on a definite territorial basis, they associate themselves together in response to interests in their constituencies which have little relation to their electoral districts. Thus, in the United States, a foreign word has come into use to designate the organized agricultural interests which constitute the farm bloc.More or less definite aggregations of this kind have been formed throughout parliamentary history. Some of these have been the result of particular manufacturing or commercial interests; other groupings have followed religious or social-class lines of cleavage; nevertheless, the basis of representation, in the popularly elected chambers, has remained territorial. Since 1919, however, an international assembly has been built up on a new political pattern. This is the Conference of the International Labor Organization, which convened for its tenth session at Geneva, in May, 1927, and in the following October completed the eighth year of its history. Notwithstanding the fact that structurally this body has a national basis, in that the delegates are sent by different member states, the conferences derive their character and mode of operation, not so much from the member states as from the three component groups in which national differences are more or less subordinate. These groups represent, respectively, the governments, the employers, and the workers of the several countries.