Deliberative Democracy and International

Labor Standards
ARCHON FUNG*

Political theorists have argued that the methods of deliberative democracy

can help to meet challenges such as legitimacy, effective governance, and
citizen education in local and national contexts. These basic insights can
also be applied to problems of international governance such as the formu-
lation, implementation, and monitoring of labor standards. A participatory
and deliberative democratic approach to labor standards would push the
labor-standards debate into the global public sphere. It would seek to create
broad discussion about labor standards that would include not only firms
and regulators, but also consumers, nongovernmental organizations,
journalists, and others. This discussion could potentially improve (1) the
quality of labor standards by incorporating considerations of economic
context and firm capability, (2) their implementation by bringing to bear
not only state sanctions but also political and market pressures, and (3) the
education and understanding of citizens. Whereas the role of public agen-
cies in state-centered approaches is to formulate and enforce labor stan-
dards, central authorities in the decentralized-deliberative approach would
foster the transparency of workplace practices to spur an inclusive, broad,
public conversation about labor standards. To the extent that a substantive
consensus around acceptable behavior emerges from that conversation,
public power should also enforce those minimum standards.

International governance is wrought with difficulties of just the sort

that deliberative democrats have sought to resolve with the tools of
participation and reasoned argumentation. Consider the legitimation
challenges faced by international governance institutions, the deep
divisions between developed countries and developing ones, and the
need to develop more effective techniques to solve complex problems in
areas such as environmental sustainability and labor standards. Locally
and nationally, deliberation has been offered as a way to address these
conundrums of legitimacy (Cohen 1989), conflict resolution (Gutmann
and Thompson), and problem-solving (Cohen and Sabel; Fung and
Wright).
It is perhaps unsurprising, however, that the growing ranks of delib-
erative democrats (Bohman; Cohen 1989; Fishkin 1991, 1995; Habermas

*John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 16, No. 1,
January 2003 (pp. 51–71). © 2003 Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148,
USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. ISSN 0952-1895
52 ARCHON FUNG

1996) have thus far shied away from applying their insights to the prob-
lems of globalization and international regulation.1 The conditions that
make deliberative democracy attractive in other contexts seem to be
absent in the international arena. The most obvious of these is scale.
Implicitly or explicitly, many deliberative democrats are motivated by
images of face-to-face discussions in settings such as New England town
meetings (Goodin; Mansbridge) that are plainly inappropriate to most
regional and national, much less global, decisions. A second difficulty is
the absence in the international context of decisive public power—a cos-
mopolitan state—toward which deliberative decisions or criticism might
be addressed. As there is no state, there is no cosmopolitan “demos”—no
group of citizens who share a fate and inhabit a polity—within which
thick deliberation might occur (Bellamy and Castiglione; Zürn). Further-
more, fair deliberation is thought to require equalities of procedural
access and substantive capabilities and resources that are commonly vio-
lated by the exclusions and inequalities of the global context (Knight and
Johnson).
Notwithstanding these prima facie objections, the values and insights
of theories of deliberation can offer important guidance toward the
solution of vexing international problems such as the formulation and im-
plementation of labor standards. The distinctive idea of deliberative
democracy is that binding rules and practices should be determined
through open and fair processes of public reason in which parties—be
they citizens, political officials, or groups—offer arguments and evidence
to persuade others (Rawls, 212–254). Such processes can improve gover-
nance at three levels. First, individuals—as citizens, workers, or officials—
can become more knowledgeable and other-regarding in the course of
exchanging views and reasons. Arenas of deliberation can thus function
as “schools of democracy” in which people learn the skills and disposi-
tions necessary to be good citizens (Cohen and Rogers; Levine; Mattson).
Second, deliberation can increase the wisdom and efficacy of standards
and rules by introducing additional information and diversifying the per-
spectives considered (Fearon; Robb). When participants are engaged in
implementing resulting policies, public action also gains from their coop-
eration and contributions (Fung and Wright). Finally, deliberation can
also enhance the legitimacy and credibility of standards and rules, and of
the entities that set them as well as those that follow them, by subjecting
them to the scrutiny of open public debate, review, and determination
(Cohen 1989).
The arena of labor standards would certainly benefit from greater
public understanding (viz. the conflicts over high labor standards and
accusations of protectionism) and wiser, more effective rules. Firms,
states, and intergovernmental organizations would similarly enjoy
increased legitimacy and credibility. The sections below argue that
making the processes of setting, monitoring, and enforcing international
labor standards more deliberative can educate citizens, improve policy,
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 53

and increase legitimacy in the international arena. Extending and apply-

ing the political ideal of deliberative democracy to the stateless and
demos-less problem of international labor standards, however, requires
recasting many of its elements: who participates, methods of enforcing
decisions and standards that result, and designs of institutions that seek
to promote discursive engagement.
The next section begins this inquiry by offering two competing images
of international deliberation. One would utilize deliberation to solidify a
broad consensus on particular labor standards that are then promulgated
and enforced by governmental entities, while the other would engender
an open debate between corporations, firms, unions, civil-society organi-
zations, and consumers, in which standards are continuously contested
and revised in pragmatic fashion (Dewey; Dorf and Sabel). The following
section argues that the second image better approximates the ideals of
deliberation and is more capable of capturing its benefits for individual
development, policy, and legitimacy. The third section grapples with
issues around designing institutions that can advance fair, continuous,
and decentralized deliberation around labor standards. It argues that one
main task of such public institutions is to organize and foster a broader
public debate and to empower stakeholders to take part in that debate
rather than to develop, enforce, or adjudicate particular labor standards
(Ansell). The fourth section describes obstacles that are distinctive to this
decentralized deliberative approach.

TWO DELIBERATIVE-DEMOCRATIC APPROACHES

The Grand Consensus

The most straightforward interpretation of “deliberation” concerning
labor standards perhaps depicts an ideal in which a broad, international
consensus supports clear minimum standards of decent work. The major
burden of public deliberation would be to generate popular support for
these norms and inculcate them deeply into the international political
culture. This imagined trajectory roughly follows the slow acceptance of
some of the major articles of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declara-
tion of Human Rights in establishing universal norms (Beetham). If this
discursive effort was successful, then states and other actors who violate
these norms, like those who violate the most basic of human rights against
genocide and torture, would suffer broad condemnation and attendant
sanctions.
On this view, international public agreement can provide a firm
foundation upon which intergovernmental bodies, states, and nongov-
ernmental organizations (NGOs) interpret, adjudicate, monitor, and
implement consensus standards. Deliberation thus occurs at two levels.
In the popular discourse, expert groups offer arguments to international
publics for which rights ought to be included in the consensus core. So,
54 ARCHON FUNG

for instance, the four core labor standards offered by the International
Labor Organization (ILO) (1998)—freedom of association and collective
bargaining, freedom from forced labor, “effective” abolition of child labor,
and nondiscrimination in employment—are ascendant as part of a
minimum package of labor standards. Rights beyond these—to living
wages or to good health and safety conditions at work—are highly con-
tentious. Away from this popular argument, the elaboration and imple-
mentation of these standards occurs in insular and elite settings, often
involving negotiations between national agencies and international ones.
To the extent that the formulation of labor standards can be characterized
as deliberative, it is a senatorial deliberation between representatives of,
for example, employers, labor, and governments. Implementation of these
standards is hierarchical and state-centric; it depends upon nations rati-
fying international standards and then using their official capacities to
enforce them internally. In a more cosmopolitan version, supranational
institutions might enforce these international standards directly, as illus-
trated by emergent institutions in the European Union (Archibugi; Held;
Preuss).
This image of a grand consensus enforced by intergovernmental and
then national agencies falls short of the ideal of deliberation on several
counts. It offers only a cramped role for individuals to participate. They
are asked to join a consensus of billions around workplace standards, but
not to contribute to the content of this consensus nor to act on it; action
is entrusted instead to more distant officials and agencies (Dahl). Because
the substance of those standards typically results from abstract consider-
ations of right, tempered by political acceptability, they are likely to be
either overdrawn or too constrained. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, for example, aimed to construct an ambitious consensus
around difficult-to-achieve rights. Thus, a conflict emerged between those
who championed its political rights and those who emphasized economic
and social rights. In this regard, the declaration sets out a maximalist
agenda, rather than a set of standards for compliance. Conversely, the
ILO’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work empha-
sizes a minimal set of labor standards toward which agreement may come
more quickly, but which omits many important considerations for the
sake of consensus. The implementation of these standards, furthermore,
relies on the willingness and capacity of states that may—especially in
developing contexts—lack either the desire or the administrative where-
withal to enforce them. To the extent that popular deliberation generates
a consensus that is not implemented by these institutional arrangements,
legitimacy suffers.

Decentralized Deliberation: Civic Action and Corporate Reaction

An alternative deliberative approach begins not from the hallowed
heights of intergovernmental organizations, but rather from the recent
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 55

groundswell of demands from activists, workers, and consumers for

socially responsible production in social-movement campaigns against
visible corporations like Nike, the Gap, Disney, and many others. This is
only the turbulent tip of a much broader current of popular concern in
the developed nations about poor working conditions in the developing
ones. In a 1995 survey of some 30,000 consumers in the United Kingdom,
one in three respondents reported that they had participated in a boycott
over corporate ethical behavior (ILO Bureau for Worker’s Activities).
In a 1999 survey of 25,000 consumers in twenty-three countries, large
minorities everywhere felt that major companies had responsibilities as
ethical and social leaders. In North America, 51% of respondents reported
punishing a company for being socially irresponsible in the past year,
while 39% of Northern European respondents claimed to have done so
(Environics International).
These demands have resulted in many so-called voluntary responses
from corporations that have been targeted and anticipatory measures
from those that fear harmful publicity. Most commonly, corporations
develop codes of conduct in which they issue either declarations of intent
or internal standards for ethical conduct. While these codes often grapple
with a variety of social concerns, they tend to focus on labor and envi-
ronmental issues (Gordon and Miyake). Though estimates are imprecise,
surveys indicate that many companies, especially larger ones, have
adopted such codes. In one international survey of 300 companies, 76%
reported having a code of conduct (Berenbeim). A U.S. Department of
Labor survey of the largest apparel manufacturers and retailers reported
that thirty-six out of forty-two companies had codes restricting child
labor. Critics have doubted the sincerity of these corporate policies and
argued that they yield few benefits for workers. Many firms, in turn, have
taken pains to respond by hiring independent social auditing agencies,
developing partnerships with more credible NGOs, and incorporating
these codes into their own internal quality-management and supply-
chain practices (Fung, O’Rourke, and Sabel).
This cacophonous dynamic of protest, consumer demand, and corpo-
rate response hardly seems conducive to, or constitutive of, deliberation.
Rather than civil negotiation and rights-based reasoning, these move-
ments exploit scandals, utilize accusation, and exercise protest, while firm
responses are often designed to improve press relations rather than to
establish earnest dialogue. The protagonists are not duly selected repre-
sentatives of states or venerable interests and their associations, but rather
self-selected activists, NGOs, and corporations. Rather than tending
toward consensus standards and uniform regulations or “rules of the
game,” these demands may push firms toward diverse codes and mea-
sures. Furthermore, these efforts short-circuit official public power—they
often result in private agreements rather than public laws.
But those drawn to deliberative democracy by its participatory
moment rather than its senatorial one may discern a more promising
56 ARCHON FUNG

image of governance from these developments. Unlike the grand con-

sensus, this process is more decentralized, continuous (activists will
always argue that corporations should do better with respect to labor
standards, and perhaps they should), and impatient with traditional state-
centered regulatory mechanisms.
Writ large, these developments would sketch a pervasive, bottom-up
discourse in which the general public evaluates claims and counterclaims
about the content and violation of labor standards. In a typical exchange,
activists might condemn the suppliers of some multinational corporation
for employing children or paying poor wages, or a government for con-
doning such practices. That corporation (or government) might respond
by denying culpability, acknowledging these claims but pointing out that
such treatment is generous by the standards of the local economy, or by
reducing child labor and raising wages. In such contests, those who
demand stronger labor standards and those who operate under them
must offer increasingly credible claims to be adjudicated in the court of
public opinion by a general audience of consumers, investors, concerned
citizens, and journalists (see Lohmann this issue). In an environment
where their claims can be checked, the demands of activists and responses
of corporations become more reasonable, not because these actors are nec-
essarily motivated by ethical considerations but because that is what
public credibility demands. Such open deliberation about labor standards
creates opportunities for individuals—as political actors, private con-
sumers, or even workers—to reflect more deeply about the actual prac-
tices of firms and the impact of those practices upon often-distant workers
and communities. These engagements can in turn transform preferences,
assessments, market behaviors, and political positions.
This very general public discourse can drive a more technical but still
open and inclusive kind of deliberation. For example, student antisweat-
shop groups on U.S. campuses have worked with university administra-
tions and labor unions to develop particular codes of conduct for licensing
and purchasing of apparel (Elliot and Freeman). While this movement
began as a protest, it has become an effort in which all sides seek to
educate themselves through research committees, joint fact-finding mis-
sions, and reports. These efforts have triggered searching discussions on
issues such as the meaning and desirability of living-wage requirements.
Similarly, efforts to develop accurate and credible workplace monitoring
programs have brought together corporations, NGOs, and labor organi-
zations—often mutually antagonistic on labor-standards issues—in joint
problem-solving efforts.
Finally, decentralized participatory deliberation around labor stan-
dards should, in principle, be articulated to formal, centralized, and mus-
cular mechanisms that enforce basic labor standards at the firm, local,
national, and transnational levels. As I have described elsewhere (Fung,
O’Rourke, and Sabel), decentralized deliberation around labor standards
can generate a broad substantive consensus around minimum standards
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 57

that becomes more stringent over time. To the extent that such authority
is available, public agencies might adopt and enforce these results of
decentralized deliberation.

THE CASE FOR INCLUSIVE AND CONTINUOUS DELIBERATIVE

ENGAGEMENT

Both of these approaches have their limitations, and both are ideals in the
sense that they lie at great remove from current realities. Nevertheless,
the second, more civic and decentralized mode, offers a more promising
starting point from which to advance the principles of deliberation and
capture its benefits in the context of international labor standards. This
approach of inclusive, politically mobilized, and continuous deliberation
can make citizens in both developing and developed countries more
informed and cosmopolitan, generate responsive standards, and improve
the implementation of those standards, and thus enhance the credibility
of firms and states that adhere to them.

Cosmopolitan Citizens
A central distinction between the two approaches lies in the expectations
that they place on ordinary individuals. The hierarchical, consensual
approach relegates consumers to endorsing abstract labor standards and
entrusts the work of formulating, articulating, monitoring, and enforcing
those standards to distant agencies. Popular endorsement does not
impose specific responsibilities or duties of action. In the second, contin-
uously inclusive mode, citizens consider a plethora of claims and coun-
terclaims about the ethical character of production by various firms or
particular countries and regions. In their purchasing decisions, for
example, consumers must balance these considerations and arrive at their
own judgments both about values (e.g., child labor, minimum wages) and
about whether the behavior of firms with respect to those values is accept-
able. These judgments involve both private, internal reflection (Goodin)
and deliberation in the public sphere of newspapers, political campaigns,
and organizational claims.
On the production side of this relationship, citizens are workers and
managers rather than consumers. In a consensual approach in which
nations require firms to meet certain minimums, companies may be able
to respond with relatively straightforward policies. However, a con-
tinuously deliberative approach is likely to generate more demanding
requirements for workplace improvements. Satisfying these sometimes
requires practical, problem-solving deliberation by those who are most
familiar with production processes and dangers at work: managers and
workers themselves (Insan Hitawasana Sejahtera).
For citizens as both consumers and workers, then, the inclusive and
continuous approach to deliberation demands moral and practical reflec-
58 ARCHON FUNG

tion upon actual facts and situations. Those who engage in this process
of reflection are likely to deepen their understanding of the values at stake
in labor standards, appreciation for the complexities of advancing those
values in various economic contexts, and cosmopolitan sympathy for
those who toil under unacceptable working conditions. This reflection is
not idle. It forces action—some will refuse to connect conscience to con-
sumption, while others are moved to do so, but all must choose. In a
modest way, this discussion may spur the development of a cosmopoli-
tan public around labor standards by fortifying an inclusive global dis-
course and crystallizing cross-national solidarities among heterogeneous
actors such as activists, consumers, workers, and managers.

Responsive Standards
Whatever its prospects for broadening the minds of citizens, inclusive
deliberation might seem decidedly less attractive for formulating
workable labor standards. These complex matters could be left to a con-
sensus of experts and representatives who are insulated from political
interference. But the drive for uniformity and consensus can also hamper
the development of judicious standards, and decentralized deliberation
offers advantages in this regard. At least in the realm of labor standards,
this approach may offer a solution to the alleged tradeoff between citizen
participation and effective governance (Bohman; Dahl; Lohmann this
issue).
First, the desire for consensus and uniformity can drive standards to a
minimum package and thus omit important issues, either because they
cannot gain sufficient support or because they are not everywhere applic-
able or urgent. Thus, the core labor standards mentioned above omit con-
siderations that are widely acknowledged to be important, such as wage
levels and occupational health and safety. Attempting to include such
considerations would be self-defeating, because it would soften the con-
sensus that gives core labor standards their power. But more decentral-
ized encounters, targeted to individual firms, industries, or countries, can
develop standards that would be inappropriate or unfeasible as univer-
sal demands. So, for example, many of the recent encounters between con-
sumers, NGOs, and firms in the apparel industry (Global Alliance; Insan
Hitawasana Sejahtera) have yielded programs to address problems such
as occupational health, safety, and compensation.
Second, decentralized and continuous deliberation can better respond
to differences in economic development contexts than can consensus- and
rights-based approaches. Many critics from developing countries object
to international labor standards on issues such as wages and child labor
because they fear such policies will have harmful protectionist conse-
quences. The deliberative response is not to reject labor standards alto-
gether, but to develop diverse labor standards appropriate to different
levels of economic development. So, while incomes from working chil-
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 59

dren may be necessary to sustain families in many regions of India and

China, situations in which children receive some education in addition to
work are preferable to those in which they lack these opportunities, or in
which they suffer physical or psychological abuse (Basu 1999). Delibera-
tion should aim to articulate appropriately subtle standards for child
labor that are rooted in the full complexity of circumstances. Similarly,
labor standards ought to be more demanding for wealthy nations. A
recent Human Rights Watch report criticizing constraints on freedom of
association in the U.S., for example, is compelling not so much because
the U.S. stands in violation of universal norms of association—El Salvador
and China are far worse in this regard—but because it performs so poorly
compared to its peers in Western Europe.
Finally, unlike an approach geared to entrenching fixed rights, solu-
tions that emerge from decentralized deliberation can better manage
unintended consequences by incorporating feedback into their standards
and methods. For example, the outright prohibition of child labor in poor
areas can make matters worse by driving families below subsistence
levels or by pushing children into less regulated, more degrading and
dangerous work. International conventions now recognize this reality and
call for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor, rather than a
more encompassing immediate ban. Serious efforts of NGOs, the ILO, and
firms have grappled with these intertwined difficulties by combining
education with work, modifying production facilities and processes to
reduce child labor, and instituting careful monitoring procedures. These
efforts sometimes proceed through cooperative, deliberative problem-
solving, but sometimes they are more adversarial encounters in which
activists accuse, governments and firms respond, activists point out the
partial character of solutions and their unintended consequences, and so
on (ILO 1997; International Labor Rights Fund).

Implementation
In local and regional contexts, deliberative processes are thought to facil-
itate implementation by securing greater acceptance among those who
must live with the burdens of the decision, expanding the resources
devoted to public problem-solving by enlisting their commitment and
capacities, and thickening post-hoc monitoring and assessments (Cohen
and Rogers; Fung and Wright). In the context of decentralized delibera-
tion around international labor standards, similar implementation advan-
tages may accrue when firms, workers, and consumers are deeply
involved in efforts to improve and assess social performance.
Decentralized deliberation occurs not only in the disciplined con-
texts of international organizations and official venues, but also in the
public and economic spheres. Accordingly, it supplements the ordinary
pressures to implement labor standards that come from national and
international agencies with potentially much more potent demands for
60 ARCHON FUNG

socially responsible production methods and decent working conditions.

In an information-rich environment, these demands come from con-
sumers in product markets and investors in capital markets who are
sensitive to corporate reputation and brand quality, and through mass
media.
Furthermore, decentralized deliberative initiatives often engage par-
ticular firms or industries and their critics in dialogues on labor standards
and violations (Broad and Cavanaugh; O’Rourke). These interactions can
generate sophisticated workplace-improvement solutions that utilize the
managerial and organizational capacities of firms themselves in ways that
uniform standards or more distant regulators cannot. Firms have begun
to incorporate labor-standards monitoring into their internal supply-
chain management and evaluation practices, thus redeploying organiza-
tional methods and capacities designed to improve quality, product
diversity, and cost to the task of improving labor standards (Sabel,
O’Rourke, and Fung).
Third, decentralized deliberative action often brings sustained
demands for monitoring and assessment. In order to demonstrate their
seriousness to skeptical consumers and other publics, firms have adopted
various reporting, monitoring, and transparency measures. Many corpo-
rations have adopted independent or third-party monitoring in which
they hire social-auditing firms or submit to the inspections of nongover-
mental organizations (NGO) or other independent groups to conduct
assessments of their labor conditions and those of their suppliers. This
practice has created a cottage industry of for-profit and nonprofit social-
auditing consultants and accreditation bodies. Many firms have also
agreed to make certain aspects of their own operations less opaque—for
example, by disclosing the locations of their production facilities or pre-
viously confidential internal social-inspection results.

Legitimacy and Credibility

These elements of a decentralized deliberative approach—engaged
workers and consumers, articulated and contextually sensitive standards,
and forceful and monitored implementation—contribute to the legitimacy
of the enterprise of enhancing labor standards at several levels. First, stan-
dards that emerge from an open and publicized process of argument and
response that takes the interests of workers from developing countries,
the concerns of ethical consumers, and the capabilities of firms themselves
into account are likely to be better understood than those generated in
more insular and hierarchical fashion. For example, when their content
reflects economic contexts and firm capacities, standards can more ably
withstand objections that labor standards are protectionist or economi-
cally unfeasible.
Firms that strive toward standards from fair, decentralized delibera-
tion can gain additional credibility as socially responsible entities.
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 61

Abiding by the basic labor standards that are laid out by core interna-
tional conventions or even local law has proven insufficient to shield cor-
porations from accusations of abuse. However, firms can demonstrate
additional ethical commitment by participating in discussions about what
reasonable advances might be made above these minimums, developing
programs toward those ends, and then submitting to verification proto-
cols. Deliberative engagement of this sort will not silence the most
strident or skeptical advocates, but it will differentiate firms that are
responsive and proactive from the ones that are defensive or that fail to
adopt workplace conditions as a priority.
Finally, institutions and organizations that successfully organize this
deliberation can gain legitimacy as labor-standards authorities. Currently,
a variety of agents in the intergovernmental sector, among nonprofits and
even among large consulting firms, contribute in partial and unintended
ways to deliberation on labor standards.2 None of these, however, has
managed to position itself as a neutral arbiter. They are alternatively
thought to be probusiness or beholden to it, captured by particular labor
interests, constrained by limited scope, or simply ineffective. Thus, there
is space for the construction of public authority—perhaps composed of
one or more of these agencies, organizations, or associations—to foster
decentralized deliberation.
More crucial than opportunity, however, is the need for such author-
ity. Without it, decentralized deliberation on labor standards is haphaz-
ard in its focus and inequitable in its decision processes, and its impacts
are difficult to assess or utilize. Consider now the functions of such public
power.

DELIBERATIVE INSTITUTIONS: CREATING SPACE FOR PUBLICS

The purposes of regulatory authority under a state-centric and consen-
sual notion of labor standards are to develop standards, generate popular
support for them, and promulgate and enforce them.3 Its distinctive role
in the deliberative approach is to facilitate open and fair discourse and
foster decentralized action. Following the discussions of the facilitative
role that states can play in networked governance arrangements (Ansell),
public power in the deliberative approach aims to (1) provide the knowl-
edge base necessary for fair and effective deliberation through trans-
parency and the diffusion of information about labor practices and efforts
to improve them, and (2) constitute stakeholders to participate in delib-
erations about labor standards, with special attention to voices and inter-
ests that would otherwise lack the strength to be heard or the capacity to
act.

Transparency
One important obstacle to the development of current consumer, activist,
and corporate efforts is the paucity of reliable public information regard-
62 ARCHON FUNG

ing both the quality of efforts to implement workplace-improvement

programs and their effects. Firms themselves hesitate to reveal even
basic facts, such as the locations of production facilities or the identities
of suppliers, on the grounds that such information is a source of com-
petitive advantage. These habits of secrecy have extended even to the
emerging community of private and nonprofit social-auditing concerns,
who often consider their protocols and assessments to be proprietary
products.
This opacity impedes deliberation and the development of labor stan-
dards in two central ways. First, it is difficult to systematically compare
the labor-standards practices of firms (or regions and nations) against one
another. Deliberations and arguments about labor-standards violations
thus often depend upon anecdotal accounts or politically motivated
claims and public-relations counterclaims. The lack of public data to
assess and compare this kind of social performance makes it difficult for
firms that out-perform their peers to credibly claim that they are ethical
and responsible. It is also difficult for consumers, activist organizations,
and others to confidently translate their values into choices about who to
praise and who to criticize. Second, the absence of public knowledge and
discussion about workplace-improvement strategies reduces the ability of
civic, public, and private actors to develop effective strategies for improv-
ing workplace conditions. That problem is complex and multifaceted: it
spans multiple issues—such as child labor and education, environment,
industrial hygiene, and occupational health—and organizational bound-
aries that separate multinational corporations from their suppliers, public
regulators, and NGOs. The deliberative exploration and comparison of
public and private strategies is one promising way to make headway
(Dorf and Sabel), but that cannot occur in the absence of fuller public dis-
closure.
Improving the transparency of private labor-standards programs, their
monitoring, and their impacts is thus one prime route to improving the
quality and consequences of decentralized deliberation. Individual actors
often lack the motivations and the capacities to compile and disclose
information about labor standards. Collective action and the intervention
of public authority are therefore necessary to establish this condition of
effective deliberation. Such a “transparency authority” would seek to
develop standards for pooling information about public and private
workplace-improvement efforts, their monitoring and assessment, and
capacities to render this information comparable and accessible. It would
do so by organizing various constituent entities, such as large multina-
tional firms and supplier groups, social-auditing firms and independent
monitoring groups, civic and labor organizations, and official regulatory
bodies. This authority might grow out of initiatives at intergovernmental
organizations such as the ILO, the United Nations (UN), or the World
Bank. Alternatively, it could also spring from a variety of nongovern-
mental efforts to establish broad labor-standards criteria, such as the
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 63

Workers’ Rights Consortium, Social Accountability 8000, or the Global

Reporting Initiative. Whatever its origins, this transparency authority
would face daunting challenges. Technically, it would strive to make the
vast amount of data generated by large firms and various private and
civic social monitors comparable and interoperable. Its regulatory chal-
lenge would be to compel firms and their suppliers to collect and disclose
information about their labor practices and their assessments. Politically,
such a body would strive to maintain a responsive neutrality in its inter-
pretation and construction of knowledge standards that consumers in the
North, workers in the South, multinational firms, regulators, and others
would perceive as reasonable and fair.
If these obstacles were met, deliberations in the unruly public sphere,
as well as those that occur among regulators, could draw upon compar-
ative information that would dramatically improve both the content
(What standards are reasonable in various situations? How can we
reach them? Which firms deserve applause and which approbation?)
and practical effects of efforts to improve labor standards. In particular,
transparency would enable various publics and regulators to identify
leaders and laggards in labor-standards performance. Economic, politi-
cal, and administrative pressures that have driven much of the movement
toward corporate accountability and social responsibility would be more
judiciously targeted. They would help to create competition for perfor-
mance in labor standards among large firms, who would pass this pres-
sure onto their suppliers. While high-profile, brand-sensitive firms would
work hard to score high marks, even unexceptional firms would try avoid
poor labor-standards assessments. This competition would, in turn,
expand and discipline markets for services such as assessment and
technical assistance that larger firms need to become credible social per-
formers. Enhanced transparency would thus create a double-sided com-
petition that could continuously improve both labor practices within
firms and the capacity of monitors to evaluate them (Sabel, O’Rourke, and
Fung).

Voice and Inequality

In addition to lack of transparency, inequality poses another major
obstacle to fair decentralized deliberation. Cooperative and conflictual
engagements around workplace standards and conditions are typically
characterized by intense inequalities and bear little resemblance to a
Habermassian ideal-speech situation. A second important function of
public authority for decentralized deliberation, then, is to increase the
fairness of labor-standards discourse by mitigating these inequalities.
Relations between workers and their employers are frequently charac-
terized by corrosive inequalities. However, the contributions of workers
are crucial for effectively identifying and prioritizing problems, develop-
ing strategies to improve workplaces, and monitoring and assessing pro-
64 ARCHON FUNG

grams in the deliberative approach to labor standards. When their voices

are not heard, or when those of employers or officials dominate, deliber-
ation suffers because it is inattentive to the particular concerns of labor-
ers and less disposed to revealing deceptions and abuses. Many of the
rights commonly thought crucial to underwriting deliberative democracy,
such as freedom of expression, are also important as ways of securing
minimally open conditions in the deliberative approach to labor stan-
dards (Cohen 1997). In particular, the core right of workers to freedom of
association can reduce the discursive inequality between workers and
employers and thereby enhance the quality of deliberation.
Conventional state-centric measures to secure freedom of association
will therefore build foundations for the deliberative approach. However,
the methods and pressures of the deliberative approach itself can also
advance associative liberty for workers. Enlarging freedom of association
where it is cramped or nearly nonexistent is at least as politically and eco-
nomically daunting as reducing child labor or improving occupational
safety. The best tactics for advancing this liberty will vary according to
local and national circumstances, and practical efforts will inevitably
stumble on unintended consequences. As with other labor standards,
transparency can illuminate the corporate and political practices con-
ducive to greater associative freedom and identify firms and governments
that are leaders and laggards. Social, political, and market pressures
might then generate pressures to realize this right. Thus the methods of
the deliberative approach can build, in ways that are gradual and atten-
tive to local circumstance, one condition of the approach’s own success:
the freedom of association that reduces the inequality of voice between
workers and their employers.
The differential capacity and voice that separates the developed North
from the developing South is a second characteristic inequality infecting
the politics of labor standards. Backed by familiar histories of domina-
tion, many fear that international labor standards will, in practice,
turn out to be standards and rules that wealthy nations impose upon
poor ones. On these grounds, many have resisted attaching sanctions to
existing labor standards through mechanisms such as a World Trade
Organization “social clause” (Bhagwati). Others have suggested that
international labor standards ought to emerge principally through agree-
ments among poor nations themselves in a “consensus from the tropics”
(Basu 2001, 63). The domination of voices from developed nations can
twist labor-standards deliberation to the detriment of those in develop-
ing ones by favoring particular priorities and benchmarks, being deaf to
appeals based on contextual considerations, or monopolizing monitoring
capacities and assessments.
These massive inequalities cannot be mitigated easily, much less brack-
eted. Nevertheless, the deliberative approach may treat the voices and
interests of workers in developing countries more favorably than hierar-
chical, state-centric modes of labor-standards governance. The delibera-
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 65

tive approach focuses on the need for understanding working conditions

in the lives of actual workers, and this perspective naturally privileges
the opinions and knowledge of those workers. Furthermore, the empha-
sis on civic and public discussion in the deliberative approach creates the
infrastructure for generating sympathies, solidarities, and mutually rein-
forcing organizational linkages between Northern and Southern citizens
and organizations (Keck and Sikkink).
The extent to which background inequalities between rich nations and
developing ones bias deliberation around labor standards also depends
upon the details of institutional design. A public authority that seeks
to foster decentralized deliberation should therefore strive to mitigate
this characteristic inequality in its internal composition and governance.
Many of the nascent public, nongovernmental, and private associational
efforts to foster transparency and social competition stem from and are
predominantly composed of parties from developed countries, such as
large multinational producers, global consulting firms, and organized
labor. If one of these efforts is to mature into a legitimate agency that orga-
nizes fair and open deliberation about labor standards, it must first diver-
sify its composition. Beyond basic constitutional equity, such a body might
also foster equity on the ground by building the capacities of labor agen-
cies, trade unions, and NGOs in developing countries. Finally, a delibera-
tion-reinforcing public authority should emphasize the inherently
privileged position of developing-country perspectives and interests in
both its internal discussions and public communications. Its underlying
refrain in the public sphere and more formal arenas should reiterate the
self-evident truth that international labor standards are pursued princi-
pally for the sake of workers in developing countries. The deliberative
approach would expand the space for those perspectives to be heard and
harness the power of global publics and public institutions to them.

OBSTACLES TO DECENTRALIZED DELIBERATION

Though it offers substantial benefits over more state-centric and consen-

sual approaches to labor standards, decentralized deliberation faces its
own distinctive challenges. Only experience can reveal whether a partic-
ipatory approach to international labor standards can overcome these
impediments. However, brief reflection upon the most significant of these
obstacles suggests that they may be less daunting than they initially
appear.

Apathy
Can popular interest in the complex and distant problems of international
labor conditions be durable and deep? Recent enthusiasm for sweat-free
products, ethical consumerism, and responsible investing may soon
fade, and decentralized deliberation may be unrealistic in its demands for
66 ARCHON FUNG

active, broad, and continuing public interest. The above approach

addresses this problem of apathy in part by constructing an environment
in which social concerns about international conditions of production
becomes part of the ordinary evaluation of products, companies, and
national policies. The strategy here is to reduce the costs of deliberative
engagement for consumers, workers, organizations, journalists, and reg-
ulators through transparency and similar measures. When information is
freely available and comparisons of social performance can be easily
made, individuals and organizations can more easily reflect, deliberate,
and act upon otherwise latent ethical concerns.
More practically, will institutional efforts to reduce the costs of delib-
erative engagement in labor standards be sufficient to generate the social,
political, and market pressures and discussions that motivate labor-
standards improvements? While it may be unrealistic to expect a large
portion of any nation’s consumers or voters to possess or exercise such
ethical commitments, the substantial response of many high-profile cor-
porations to consumer concerns and threats to their reputation suggests
that even a modest number of critics can cause large firms to alter their
policies. In competitive markets, marginal threats are important and
reputation is difficult to build but easy to lose. Decentralized delibera-
tion may thus yield worthwhile labor-standards advances despite quite
partial public participation.

Limited Scope
A second difficulty is that public concern may extend only to high-profile
corporations for whom reputations and brand names are crucial compet-
itive advantages. If the reach of decentralized deliberation was constricted
to the few companies in this realm and their business partners, it would
be a narrow regulatory approach indeed. Consumer and social-move-
ment campaigns for stronger labor standards have thus far been largely
limited to such prominent firms. However, experience from other arenas
in which transparency regulation enjoys a longer history suggests that
the actions of the information-forcing public authority described above
would substantially extend the scope of decentralized deliberation.
The Toxics Release Inventory in the United States and the PROPER ini-
tiative in Indonesia, for example, are both state programs that provide
information about the environmental performance of private firms and
production facilities to the general public. Far from being household
names, the firms affected by these regulations are typically obscure man-
ufacturing, chemical, and other industrial concerns. Nevertheless, sub-
stantial evidence suggests that these programs do compel firms to
improve their environmental performance (Afsah, Blackman, and Ratu-
nanda; Fung and O’Rourke; Karkkainen). These same dynamics might
well develop in a labor-standards arena regulated by monitoring and
transparency.
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 67

Diversion and Distraction from Binding Regulation

Some advocates for more stringent labor standards may nevertheless fear
that this decentralized deliberative approach may ultimately harm the
cause by diverting attention and energy away from establishing public
capacity to compel corporate behavior regarding labor standards. The
conventional path toward that end would involve establishing interna-
tional conventions of minimum decency, cajoling nations to adopt those
conventions, and fortifying an international popular consensus to support
them. While that path, like the parallel trajectories of labor standards
within nations and international human rights, may require decades to
translate ethical commitment into compelling legal and political institu-
tions, many feel that it is nevertheless more sure. Asking activists, con-
sumers, workers, and citizens to focus upon particular firms and nations,
acknowledge the complexities of implementing labor standards, and
support “soft” public measures such as independent monitoring and
transparency may weaken the resolve to pursue the longer but more
familiar path.
But decentralized deliberation may have the opposite effect. By dra-
matically broadening the conversation around international labor stan-
dards and by bringing much more information to bear, it may make
both conventional binding regulation and unconventional pressure for
improving labor standards more compelling and effective.
At the level of individuals and organizations, the deliberative approach
uses public authority to facilitate direct channels of expression, pressure,
and response between citizens and workers on the one hand and corpo-
rations on the other. When firms (and their chains of suppliers) are
transnational, these unmediated channels operate more nimbly than
either conventional state-mediated regulation or international govern-
mental action. Within nations, these mobilized constituencies—including
consumers, workers, journalists, investors, and others—might render
labor regulation more open, inclusive, and deliberative and less subject
to capture by concentrated and well-organized interests. Furthermore,
regulators and legislators might use the knowledge generated through
transparency and robust public debate to formulate more sensible,
discriminating, and informed mandatory labor standards. Finally, their
efforts to enforce these standards would be strengthened by the moni-
toring and transparency provisions of the deliberative approach.
At the international level, the deliberative approach potentially com-
plements the agenda of cosmopolitan democracy laid out by David Held
and others (Archibugi; Held). That program favors global democratic
institutions from both above and below. From above, the program would
make institutions such as the UN (and the ILO) more powerful by grant-
ing them direct jurisdiction—at least in some areas such as human
rights—unmediated by national governments. From below, cosmopolitan
democracy also favors the development of transnational civil-society
68 ARCHON FUNG

organizations that participate in global governance. Although it empha-

sizes grassroots deliberation and action more than does cosmopolitan
democracy, the decentralized deliberative approach to labor standards
laid out above is entirely consistent with this approach. The imagined
international transparency authority, for example, regulates transnational
corporations and their suppliers directly, not through the auspices of
national sovereignty. The results of this transparency regulation might
foster just the kinds of transnational civil society organizations favored
by cosmopolitan democracy. Similarly, decentralized deliberation around
labor standards might inform and support centralized international
authorities in their efforts to promulgate and enforce basic mandatory
labor standards.

CONCLUSION

Labor standards are one important component of human dignity and

rights generally. The most familiar translation of these deep and broadly
shared commitments into public action has relied upon state institutions
and their international analogues to entrench clear rules and requirements
and to enforce them upon private economic actors. The ideal of inclusive
deliberative democracy offers an additional, more participatory method
by which to advance international labor standards. Rather than viewing
these human rights as a condition of democracy or political participation
and substantive basic rights as two important but independent values,
this approach would help realize those rights through deliberative demo-
cratic engagement.
The recent wave of globalization has created the opportunity to explore
this approach by sparking a new surge of public interest in workplace
conditions and practices worldwide. This interest has spurred labor-
standards innovations on the part of activists and firms and has given rise
to a host of social-monitoring and certification bodies. But these devel-
opments by themselves are likely to be short-lived, to be limited in scope,
or to unfairly privilege certain voices and priorities. The decentralized
deliberative approach would meet these challenges by refashioning the
regulatory power of international bodies to sustain this broad-based inter-
est, to deepen it through the illumination of transparency, and to harness
it by triggering social competition among the firms that ultimately deter-
mine workplace conditions. This wider conception of direct and cos-
mopolitan political participation may help hasten our progress toward
effective labor standards.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article grows out of a project on international labor standards in

which I have collaborated with Dara O’Rourke and Charles Sabel. I also
thank Joshua Cohen, Robert Howse, Mark Levinson, Gay Seidman, David
 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONAL LABOR STANDARDS 69

Trubek, Marco Verweij, David Weil, and two anonymous reviewers for
their generous criticisms and suggestions.

NOTES
1. For some exceptions, see Koh and Slye as well as Thompson.
2. See Sabel, O’Rourke, and Fung for a discussion of the role of organizations
such as the ILO, the World Bank, the United Nations Global Compact in the
intergovernmental sector, SA8000 and the Workers’ Rights Consortium
among nonprofit groups, and for-profit consultancies such as Pricewater-
houseCoopers in labor-standards discourse and action.
3. For another approach to enhancing accountability in international gover-
nance arrangements, see Stiglitz, this issue.

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