Description
This paper explores why international labour protection instruments, such as the International Labour Organization Convention 129 (C129), Labour Inspection in Agriculture, is adopted by some countries but not others. International organizations (IOs), such as the ILO, are central to the diffusion of acceptable governance norms and practices. Although largely successful, their influence varies across states and issues. In scholarship on global governance, the variable adoption of governance standards inspired by IOs is attributed to differences in the broader policy environment of states, including the position of hegemonic powers on the prescriptions or governance instruments of IOs, the disposition of peer states to those initiatives, as well as the domestic politics, society, and political economies of states. Based on norm localization scholarship, the manifestation of the abovementioned factors in states should produce different institutional responses to global norms, standards, and initiatives. However, there is a lot more to learn about the variable adoption of the governance instruments of IOs, such as ILO C-129, which provides inspection guidelines to protect workers' rights across the agricultural value chain. Therefore, this paper explores the following question: why, despite having similar policy environments that should inspire the adoption of ILO C-129, have Nigeria and Kenya ratified this international governance instrument while Ghana and Tanzania have not? In exploring the abovementioned question, I undertook a qualitative grounded theory research based on data triangulation across the abovementioned case studies. By analysing government policy documents and interviewing policymakers across the cases, the paper theorizes on the bureaucratic and political traditions, practices, and norms that support or impede the localization of international governance instruments.
