The ILO at 100: Institutional Innovation in an Era of Populism

Abstract

International organizations rarely die, but they often become irrelevant. The mere fact of the International Labour Organization's (ILO's) survival thus says little about its accomplishments or impact. Yet the ILO has a rich history of reinventing itself in response to shifts in global labor conditions, and it has responded to those changes with legal and policy innovations that once attracted widespread attention and praise but have recently been met mostly with indifference.