18. Jeffrey Sachs, “Life in the Economic Emergency Room,” in The Political Economy of Policy Reform, ed. John Williamson (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1994), 503–26.
19. Leszek Balcerowicz, “Understanding Post-Communist Transitions,” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 4 (1994): 75–89.
20. Bruce Western, “A Comparative Study of Working-Class Disorganization: Union Decline in Eighteen Advanced Capitalist Countries,” American Sociological Review 60, no. 2 (1995): 179–201; Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (Penang, Malaysia: Third World Network, 1997), 69–94; Jay Mazur, “Labor’s New Internationalism,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000, 79–84.
21. See, for example, Alan Tonelson, Race to the Bottom (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000), 53–80.
22. Evelyne Huber, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and John D. Stephens, “The Paradoxes of Contemporary Democracy: Formal, Participatory, and Social Dimensions,” in Transitions to Democracy, ed. Lisa Anderson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 195.
23. Paul Kubicek, “Organized Labor in Post-Communist States: Will the Western Sun Set on It Too?” Comparative Politics 32, no. 1 (1999): 83–102; Paul Kubicek, Organized Labor in Postcommunist States: From Solidarity to Infirmity (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004); Stephen Crowley and David Ost, eds., Workers After Workers’ States: Labor and Politics in Post communist Eastern Europe (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); Stephen Crowley, “Explaining Labor Weakness in Post-Communist Europe: Historical Legacies and Comparative Perspective,” East European Politics and Society 18, no. 3 (2004): 394–429.
24. See, for example, Michael Shalev, “The Resurgence of Labor Quiescence,” in The Future of Labour Movements, ed. Marino Regini (London: Sage, 1992), 102–32; Aristide Zolberg, “Response: Working-Class Dissolution,” International Labor and Working Class History 47 (Spring 1995): 28–38; James A. Piazza, “Globalizing Quiescence: Globalization, Union Density, and Strikes in Fifteen Industrial Countries,” Economic and Industrial Democracy 26, no. 2 (2005): 289–314.
25. Christopher Candland and Rudra Sil, eds., The Politics of Labor in a Global Age: Continuity and Change in Late-Industrializing and Post-Socialist Economies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Beverly J. Silver, Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
26. Maria Victoria Murillo, “From Populism to Neoliberalism: Labor Unions and Market Reforms in Latin America,” World Politics 52, no. 1 (2000): 137. See also Maria Victoria Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 11–26.
27. Stephen Levitsky and Lucan Way, “Between a Shock and a Hard Place: The Dynamics of Labor-Backed Adjustment in Poland and Argentina,” Comparative Politics 30, no. 2 (1998): 172.
28. Eva R. Bellin, “Contingent Democrats: Industrialists, Labor, and Democratization in Late Developing Countries,” World Politics 52, no. 2 (2000): 175–205.
29. Katrina Burgess, Parties and Unions in the New Global Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 8–16.
30. Christopher Alexander, “The Architecture of Militancy: Workers and the State in Algeria, 1970–1990,” Comparative Politics 34, no. 3 (2002): 315–19.
31. Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt: Workers, Unions, and Economic Restructuring (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
32. Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, 50–51.
33. Murillo, “From Populism to Neoliberalism,” 153.
1 PARTIES, UNIONS, AND ECONOMIC REFORMS
As we saw in the Introduction, the ways in which organized labor reacted to changes associated with structural adjustment—and, more important, whether it succeeded in influencing the shape of privatization policies—differed markedly in Poland, Egypt, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. As we have also seen, the extant literature, while providing many important insights into the dynamics of reform experience, does not satisfactorily account for this observed variation. In this chapter, I lay out the theoretical framework that links the historical patterns of interaction between ruling parties and organized labor, the resources that organized labor extracts from the ruling parties over time, and the ability of unions to insert themselves successfully into policy debates once economic restructuring programs are adopted.
Labor Strategies
To tease out how union interest in public sector reform is translated into policy influence, I distinguish between two phases of divestiture programs: design and implementation. Labor organizations can seek to influence one or both phases. During the design phase, labor organizations may attempt to influence the scope and speed of the envisioned program, the privatization methods that will be employed, and the prerogatives that workers will be granted within the program. Although regime type does not explain well whether organized labor succeeds or fails in shaping policy, what strategies labor chooses as it seeks to influence the process of privatization design does depend on the broader political context in which it exists. Hence, these strategies are likely to differ in democracies and authoritarian systems, since strategies that prove most effective in pluralistic context may well be of little value in an authoritarian environment. In democracies, unions are more likely to concentrate their efforts on lobbying government officials and parliamentary deputies, making alliances with political parties that are sympathetic to labor demands and interested in unions’ electoral support, presenting alternative restructuring proposals, and appealing to the broader voting public through the media and protest actions.
Similar tactics are likely to be of less utility in a context of limited political pluralism. Even if parliament and multiple political parties are present, it is unlikely that the incumbents can be voted out of office during the next electoral cycle. Therefore, lobbying parliamentarians and threatening to shift alliances to another political party prior to electoral contests are unlikely to have much influence on how government privatization proposals are formulated. More efficacious strategies entail direct lobbying, often behind the scenes, of regime officials and relying on established clientelistic networks.