Just Supply Chain
This is the second meeting of the “Just Supply Chains” working group, to be held at Stanford University on May 16-17, 2008. It will builds on the themes and debates that came out of our first meeting, held at MIT in January, 2008, but extends them by focusing more on issues related to national level and global regulation. Please find, attached, a description of the Just Supply Chains project.
Our first meeting brought together an exciting group of academics, business managers, leaders of various labor-rights NGOs, and representatives of the ILO to discuss the role of corporate codes of conduct and other private voluntary efforts have played in promoting just employment relations in global supply chains. We focused on issues of fair compensation, decent and healthy working conditions, and rights of association. Although this first meeting also discussed some innovative experiments taking place within certain sectors or even within individual nation-states, the bulk of our time was spent debating the possibilities and limitations of private voluntary regulatory efforts promoted by both corporations and NGOs.
Five key themes/questions emerged from our January meeting:
- What are the costs and benefits associated with traditional labor compliance programs and how are these costs and benefits distributed among the different actors operating across global supply chains?
- Related to this first theme is a second set of questions about “ethical consumption.”
- A third issue that emerged from our discussions in January centered on independent unions and the rights of individual workers to associate and bargain collectively for improved wages, working conditions, and work hours.
- Our fourth set of concerns builds directly on the previous issues: What can we learn from various national-level experiments with regulatory reform, especially in some of the larger developing countries?
- Finally, how do global governance arrangements, in particular as they relate to bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements impact the promotion of just working conditions across global supply chains?
These five themes will be the focus of our May 16-17 workshop at Stanford. As with our first workshop, our minimal hope is to establish a common basis of knowledge and generate lively discussions around these important issues. Our more ambitious agenda is to generate a collaborative research agenda on these issues – research that will have an important impact not only on various academic disciplines but also on real-world practice and policy. To facilitate these two goals, we have once again invited a diverse group of academics, business managers, and NGO and IGO representatives to share their respective knowledge and engage in collective discussions and debates.
» Just Supply Chains - May Papers and Powerpoints (password protected)
Bechtel Conference Center
Joshua Cohen
Program on Global Justice
Encina Hall West, Room 404
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
Joshua Cohen is a professor of law, political science, and philosophy at Stanford University, where he also teaches at the d.school and helps to coordinate the Program on Liberation Technology. A political theorist trained in philosophy, Cohen has written extensively on issues of democratic theory—particularly deliberative democracy and the implications for personal liberty, freedom of expression, and campaign finance—and global justice. Cohen is author of On Democracy (1983, with Joel Rogers); Associations and Democracy (1995, with Joel Rogers); Philosophy, Politics, Democracy (2010); The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays (2011); and Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (2011). Since 1991, he has been editor of Boston Review, a bi-monthly magazine of political, cultural, and literary ideas. Cohen is currently a member of the faculty of Apple University.
Assessing the International Influences on Democratization
Jon Pevehouse, an associate professor at the Harris School, has written widely on international organizations and international political economy issues in the field of international relations. His most recent work focuses on American foreign policy and how domestic political institutions constrain the president's ability to exercise military force abroad. He also is involved in an ongoing project on the political implications of regional trade integration.
Pevehouse's previous work has examined reciprocity within regional political conflicts, democratization and regional organizations, the political-military implications of international organizations, and economic interdependence. He is the author of Democracy from Above? Regional Organizations and Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and (with William Howell) While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers (Princeton University Press, 2007). He is also the author (with Joshua Goldstein) of International Relations (Longman Press), the leading undergraduate text on international relations.
Prior to arriving at University of Chicago, Pevehouse was in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin, where he received the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. Pevehouse received his B.A. in political science, with honors and highest distinction, from the University of Kansas and received his Ph.D. in political science from Ohio State University.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
9/11 and the Jihad Tradition
Sohail Hashmi has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the National Resource Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation Collaborative Research Grant, and the W. Alton Jones Fellowship on the Nuclear Threat. He is the author and editor of numerous publications on Islam, international relations, and comparative ethics.
Hashmi earns high praise from his students and colleagues for his dedication to teaching participants to form opinions about contemporary issues and current events using a wide range of publications and data. He teaches a wide variety of classes, including an introductory world politics course and seminars such as Just War and Jihad: Comparative Ethics of War and Peace; Comparative Politics of North Africa; and International Relations.
This workshop is also sponsored by CISAC.
CISAC Conference Room
Athens, a Democracy of Virtue
Balot is the author of Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens (Princeton, 2001) and of Greek Political Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). He is currently at work on Courage and Its Critics in Democratic Athens, from which he has published articles in the American Journal of Philology, Classical Quarterly, and Social Research. Balot is also editor of the forthcoming Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming 2007).
Balot received his doctorate in Classics at Princeton University and his B.A. degrees in Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room