Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the engagement with global labour standards is co-shaped by national social contracts in China, India and Brazil. It presents primary and secondary data to better understand different attitudes towards standards setting and compliance practices among actors.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how the engagement with global labour standards is co-shaped by national social contracts in China, India and Brazil. Such a social contract includes the formal and informal institutional arrangements, rules and norms in a society, and refers among others to historically and culturally shaped expectations concerning (minimally) acceptable social behaviour by various actors. The divisions of tasks and responsibilities to adhere to the social contract between states, firms and civil society organisations significantly differ between China, India and Brazil. Moreover, these divisions of tasks and responsibilities change over time, due to among others internal political dynamics and because the increasingly important role of these emerging economies in the global arena.

States, firms and civil society organisations in these three large emerging economies are increasingly engaged with global labour standards. Not only as supplier countries that need to comply with standards set by global value chain leaders and northern NGOs and states, but increasingly also in co-shaping the setting of a new generation of standards. The paper aims to show how differences in the social contracts of China, Brazil and India help us to better understand different attitudes towards standards setting and compliance practices among actors in these three Rising Powers.