Global Governance of Social Policy: EU Member States at the International Labour Organization

Abstract

David Mitrany, born at the end of the nineteenth century and writing about international cooperation in the middle of the twentieth, had very clear doubts about the positive effects of a European union on global cooperation. His thesis was that such regional unions would pull the energy of leaders and the capacity of international law away from common solutions towards particular constellations of interests, and prevent more fruitful forms of global cooperation from developing. The 60 years since his comments were written have seen the creation and development of the EU. Have Mitrany’s reservations come to pass? This chapter will demonstrate that although many of his doubts about the creation of a ‘continental union’ in Europe as a wholly positive force for international cooperation were well founded, the European Commission and EU Member States are very active in promoting cooperation in social policy at the global level.

Apart from this shadowy promise of peace, there is in any case no assurance … that such unions would advance social well-being. The advocates of continental unions have often argued that a universal system skips a stage in the political evolution of the world. But in our time the world has grown into a loose but living social system. If continental unions would tie up certain strands they would tear up many more, and more promising [strands of cooperation].

David Mitrany, ‘A War-time Submission (1941):

Territorial, Ideological, or Functional

International Organisation’, in The Functional

Theory of Politics (1975), p. 109