Abstract
In an article written in honour of Nicolas Valticos, former Director of the Standards Department of the International Labour Office (the Office), Politakis and Markov wonder whether ‘les recommandations internationales du travail’ are not the ‘instruments mal exploités ou (le) maillon faible du système normatif …’.3 The present chapter seeks to give at least a partial answer to this question by developing the idea that the Promotion of Cooperatives Recommendation, 2002 (No. 193) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) constitutes the nucleus of public international cooperative law. This law is binding and creates obligations for governments, employers and workers, as well as the cooperative organizations of ILO member states. Consciously or unconsciously Politakis and Markov imply with their question that we live currently in one normative system. Indeed, the globe is moving towards a system of legal systems. The borderlines of these legal systems do not coincide any more exclusively with the borderlines of states.4 This new setting is decisive in arguing that Recommendation No. 193 is a legally binding instrument.
Revised and updated January 2011.
Privatdozent Dr iur, Head of EMP/COOP, the Cooperative Branch of the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2007–2011). The contribution is not an official document of the ILO. I would like to thank Ms Christine Dötzer and Ms Katharina Göbel who searched the archives and libraries. Without their help I would not have been able to write this contribution.
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Notes
G. Politakis and K. Markov, ‘Les recommandations internationales du travail: instruments mal exploités ou maillon faible du système normatif?’, in J. C. Javillier, B. Gernigon and G. Politakis (eds), Les normes internationales du travail: un patrimoine pour l’avenir. Mélanges en l´honneur de Nicolas Valticos (Geneva: Bureau international du Travail, 2004).
See in this respect F. Ost, ‘Mondialisation, globalisation, universalisation: S’arracher, encore et toujours, à l’état de nature’, in C. A. Morand (ed.), Le droit saisi par la mondialisation (Brussels: Bruylant 2001); J. Chevallier, ‘Mondialisation du droit ou droit de la mondialisation ?’, in ibid., ‘Fragmentierung des Rechts. Was ist es — und wenn ja, wie viele?’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 June 2010.
The notion of ‘cooperative law’ is, of course, much wider than what even this broader term signifies. It encompasses cooperative law proper, labour law, competition law, taxation, accounting standards et al., as far as these laws bear on the structure or operations of cooperatives. It also includes implementation procedures and mechanisms. The notion is hence rather close to that of ‘institution’. Among the many definitions of ‘institutions’, the one by North seems to be the most widely known; cf. D. North: ‘Institutions’, Journal of Economic Perspectives (vol. 5, no. 1, 1991). I follow the definition by Granger which is closer to legal thinking; cf. R. Granger, ‘La tradition en tant que limite aux réformes du droit’, Revue internationale de droit comparé (vol. 31, no. 1, 1979), pp. 44, 106.
See A. Thomas, A la rencontre de l’Orient. Notes de voyage 1928–1929 (Geneva: Société des amis d’Albert Thomas, 1959).
The so-called ‘British Indian pattern of cooperation’. See H. H. Münkner (ed.), 100 Years of Co-operative Credit Societies Act, India 1904. A Worldwide Applied Model of Co-operative Legislation (Marburg Consult for Self-Help Promotion. International Co-operative Alliance, Asia and Pacific, 2005)
I have expressed this idea earlier. The arguments put forward now are to remove my own doubts as to whether they suffice to argue for the existence of a public international cooperative law or whether one cannot but report on the ‘emergence’ of such a law. In the latter sense, see H. Henrÿ, ‘Guidelines for Co-operative Legislation’, Review of International Co-operation (vol. 94, no. 2, 2001), pp. 50–105, cited here, p. 56. As of 2005 the ILO published the opinion that indeed such a public international law had emerged; see
H. Henrÿ, Guidelines for Cooperative Legislation, 2nd revised edition (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2005), p. 5.
Cf. M. Montt Balmaceda: Principios de derecho internacional del trabajo. La OIT, 2a edición (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 1998), p. 138; Politakis and Markov, op. cit., p. 513;
M. N. Shaw: International Law, 4th edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 92ff.
A. Verdross and B. Simma, Universelles Völkerrecht. Theorie und Praxis, 3. Auflage (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1984), pp. 518–523;
J. Verhoeven: Droit international public (Brussels: Larcier, 2000), pp. 335ff and 447; Virally, op. cit., pp. 169ff.
See, for example, D. Kennedy, International Legal Structure (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1987), pp. 18ff.
See H. Henrÿ, ‘The Legal Structure of Cooperatives: Does it Matter for Sustainable Development?’, in H. J. Rösner and F. Schulz-Nieswandt (eds), Beiträge der genossenschaftlichen Selbsthilfe zur wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Entwicklung. Bericht der XVI. Internationalen Genossenschaftswissenschaftlichen Tagung 2008 in Köln, 2 Bde. (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2009), Bd.1; and ‘La promoción del modelo empresarial cooperativo por la Alianza Cooperativa Internacional y la Organización Internacional del Trabajo en el nuevo orden económico global’, Revista de la Cooperación Internacional (vol. 42, no. 1, 2009), pp. 7ff.
See P. C. Jessup, Transnational Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956) and
G. Schnorr, Das Arbeitsrecht als Gegenstand internationaler Rechtsetzung (Munich: Beck, 1960). Schnorr saw this form of legislation as an evolution of international society towards a transnational community. In his footnote 10 he refers to Jessup (1947). Similar, see Virally, op. cit., p. 181.
In multi-faceted and complex processes lawmaking is shifting from parliaments to governments, and from governments to courts (see A. V. Bogdandy, Gubernative Rechtsetzung. Eine Neubestimmung der Rechtsetzung und des Regierungssystems unter dem Grundgesetz in der Perspektive gemeineuropäischer Dogmatik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999); and Bogdandy, ‘Democrazia, globalizzazione e il futuro del diritto internazionale’, Rivista di diritto internazionale (2004), p. 317;
L. Israel, L’arme du droit (Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po, 2009) and from national to regional, inter-and transnational levels. In addition, public lawmaking meets private standard-setting. The rules of the global capital market are the most striking example. Noteworthy is the transformation of stock exchanges in the form of associations into stock companies, and the quasi standard-setting by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 1. See also
L. Assier-Andrieu, Le droit dans les sociétés humaines (Paris: Nathan, 1996), p. 40.
B. Z. Tamanaha, ‘A Non-Essentialist Version of Legal Pluralism’, Journal of Law and Society (vol. 27, no. 2, 2000), pp. 296–313.
See especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, doc.999 UNTS 171 (1966) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Doc. 993 UNTS 3 (1966). See also H. Henrÿ, ‘Co-operative Law and Human Rights’, in ILO (ed.), The Relationship between the State and Cooperatives in Cooperative Legislation (Geneva: ILO, 1994), pp. 21ff. See also Ost, op. cit., p. 33.
E. Décaux, Droit international public (Paris: Dalloz, 1999), p. 47 (referring to the example of the relationship between the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). See also Virally, op. cit., p. 186.
In this sense see also J. Fazzio and G. Ullrich, ‘The ILO. Cooperative Service over 75 Years’, Review of International Cooperation (vol. 89, no. 1, 1996), p. 52. The resolutions of the Ministerial Conferences organized by the ICA Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific since 1983 also contribute to shaping this law, especially the 1999 and 2007 Resolutions (see
H. H. Münkner, ‘Internationales Genossenschaftsrecht’, in Von der Sache zum Recht. Festschrift für Volker Beuthien zum 75. Geburtstag (Munich: Beck, 2009), pp. 349–363. See also the 11th argument.
See in this respect W. S. Barnes, ‘La société coopérative. Les recherches de droit comparé comme instruments de définition d’une institution économique’, Revue internationale de droit comparé (vol. 3, no. 4, 1951), p. 569.
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Henrÿ, H. (2013). The Contribution of the ILO to the Formation of Public International Cooperative Law. In: Kott, S., Droux, J. (eds) Globalizing Social Rights. International Labour Organization (ILO) Century Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291967_7
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