Political Economy Workshop (Gov 3007)

Date: 

Monday, September 21, 2015, 12:00pm to 2:00pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel K354
Ashley Anderson will present her job market paper "Going Political: Labor, Institutions, and Democratic Unrest in North Africa”. Abstract for "Going Political: Labor, Institutions, and Democratic Unrest in North Africa” Over the past thirty years, the introduction of neo-liberal reforms in the Middle East/North Africa has put significant strain on traditional industrial relations systems. In the context of these changes, labor activism has increased dramatically, with unions throughout the region launching more demonstrations, strikes, and sit-ins than ever before. Yet despite being motivated by similar economic pressures, episodes of labor opposition have varied dramatically in terms of the demands and goals expressed by unions during protest. While some unions have limited their opposition to issues of economic concern such as wages, others have expanded their organizational agendas to include political demands like development, social justice, and democratization. What explains variation in labor mobilization against non-democratic regimes? Drawing comparative evidence from an original dataset on labor protest as well as 18 months of fieldwork, my dissertation attempts to explain this puzzling heterogeneity from an institutional perspective. Challenging the assumption that labor opposition is contingent upon the material benefits offered to trade unions, I argue that national variations in labor protest behavior reflect the institutional arrangements devised by autocrats to manage labor during early periods of state-building. Through process tracing in two "most similar" cases -- Tunisia and Morocco -- I show that where autocrats initially incorporated labor into legislative institutions, coalition building between unions and established parties undermined political activism by coopting the interests of union elites and diminishing vertical accountability between union leaders and the rank-and-file. By contrast, where unions were alienated from legislative institutions, the development of “outsider alliances” between union elites, marginalized parties, and rank-and-file members facilitated political mobilization by radicalizing labor agendas and promoting solidarity between union elites and the rank-and-file. Ultimately, my research points to the importance of taking political institutions seriously in analysis of labor behavior, and reveals one paradoxical way in which labor movements may be transformed into sources of opposition and political change in closed environments.