ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the unusual decision, within a signifi cant commercial law harmonization initiative, to regulate labour relations at the transnational level through a traditional, hard law, command and control model codifi cation. In much of the literature concerned with the social dimensions of regional integration, comprehensive labour law harmonization at the transnational level has been considered inconceivable. The initiative within the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (or OHADA after its French-language name, Organisation pour l’harmonisation en Afrique du droit des affaires) should refl ect the epitome of a robust social regionalism. Moreover, those who care about social regulation in the region want to see in the OHADA a space through which the social is understood as a valued, critical part of the economic, in which a debate about the core values that underlie economic and social cohesion can take place (Pougoué 2002: 30).
