In what way do the corporatist and authoritarian legacies that modelled some Latin American labor institutions influence the opportunities for and restrictions on organizing workers in a new context? To what extent did institutional designs, together with other economic and political factors, influence the characteristics that currently distinguish the union organizations in the countries of the region? Taking into consideration the existence of a broader debate about the consequences of globalization and political democratization for unions, the contribution of historical institutionalism and previous research, in this Article I compare the institutional and organizational dynamics of unions in four countries with authoritarian legacies and corporatist traditions (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico). The Article argues that in spite of these shared traditions, the differences in the institutional designs — which have scarcely been considered in the specialized literature — have historically imposed distinctive features on the associational power of workers and unions. These features not only persist to the present day, but also translate into dissimilar trajectories of the labor movement and opportunities for organizing workers in the last decade.
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- Theoretical Inquiries in Law
- Introduction: Labor Scholarship in an Era of Uncertainty
- Reframing the New Deal: The Past and Future of American Labor and the Law
- The Right Not to Have Rights: Posted Worker Acquiescence and the European Union Labor Rights Framework
- Organizing: Should the Employer Have a Say?
- Workplace Democracy and Democratic Worker Organizations: Notes on Worker Centers
- Organizing Workers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: The Authoritarian-Corporatist Legacy and Old Institutional Designs in a New Context
- Organizing Workers in “Hybrid Systems”: Comparing Trade Union Strategies in Four Countries — Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands
- Trade Union Ambivalence Toward Enforcement of Employment Standards as an Organizing Strategy
- Unionizing Subcontracted Labor
- The Untamed Politics of Urban Informality: “Gray Space” and Struggles for Recognition in an African City
- Informal Workers’ Aggregation and Law
- Active Industrial Citizenship of Domestic Workers: Lessons Learned from Unionizing Attempts in Israel and the United Kingdom
- Organizing in the Shadows: Domestic Workers in the Netherlands
Organizing Workers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: The Authoritarian-Corporatist Legacy and Old Institutional Designs in a New Context
Graciela Bensusán
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Published Online: 2016-02-14 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/til-2016-0006
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Published Online: 2016-02-14
Published in Print: 2016-02-01
Citation Information: Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Volume 17, Issue 1, Pages 131–161, ISSN (Online) 1565-3404, ISSN (Print) 1565-1509, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/til-2016-0006.
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- Theoretical Inquiries in Law
- Introduction: Labor Scholarship in an Era of Uncertainty
- Reframing the New Deal: The Past and Future of American Labor and the Law
- The Right Not to Have Rights: Posted Worker Acquiescence and the European Union Labor Rights Framework
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- Organizing Workers in “Hybrid Systems”: Comparing Trade Union Strategies in Four Countries — Austria, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands
- Trade Union Ambivalence Toward Enforcement of Employment Standards as an Organizing Strategy
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- Active Industrial Citizenship of Domestic Workers: Lessons Learned from Unionizing Attempts in Israel and the United Kingdom
- Organizing in the Shadows: Domestic Workers in the Netherlands
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