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Introduction: Multilevel Labor Activism, Transnational Institutions, and China

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Transnational Activism, Global Labor Governance, and China

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Abstract

The book embarks to enrich our understanding of transnational activism within a multilayered governance architecture targeting an internally and externally powerful, non-democratic state. How do transnational labor activist mobilize within the contemporary global governance architecture in order to affect working conditions in China? In order to empirically explore this question, I develop an analytical framework based upon insights from research on social movements and transnational activism, international political economy, international relations, institutional theory, and labor relations which helps to gain a deeper understanding of the development and outcome of transnational activism across a variety of contexts and scales. I propose to analyze the different ways through which labor activist mobilize to study the combined effects of what I call transnational pathways of influence. I distinguish between four main pathways of influence. Transnational labor rights advocates can try to mobilize within or target international organizations (the international-organizational pathway), other states or regions (the bilateral pathway), transnational companies and private regulatory arrangements (the market pathway), or they can support the development of domestic civil society organizations (the civil society pathway). The framework developed in this chapter clarifies how activisms gets shaped by and also shapes the current global governance architecture with its multiple overlapping legal arrangements, each layer having a specific relationship to the domestic context. Hence, the framework helps to situate transnational labor-rights activism and its outcomes within macro-level changes in the global political–economic system and changes in domestic structure of the state targeted.

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  1. Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Sabrina Zajak

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Zajak, S. (2017). Introduction: Multilevel Labor Activism, Transnational Institutions, and China. In: Transnational Activism, Global Labor Governance, and China. Non-Governmental Public Action. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95022-5_1

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