Levitsky and Mainwaring 2006

Levitsky, Steven, and Scott Mainwaring. 2006. "Organized Labor and Democracy in Latin America". Comparative Politics. 39 (1): 21-42.

• Whole article focused on contradicting claim that unions/organized labor are consistently/majorly/always pro-democracy

• In Latin America, labor movements’ regime preferences hinged on two factors: nature of partisan alliances and perceived regime alternatives (21)
• Pro-democracy belief based on three assumptions: (22)
• unions are homogeneous
• unions only seek to maximize the material well-being of their members
• members material well-being is always better in a democracy
• BUT
• labor leaders are often autonomous from rank and file (23)
• institutional arrangements have insulated, coopted labor leaders in some instances (Collier and Collier 1979, 1991)
• unions have political goals, as well as organizational survival to think about (23-24)
• Explaining labor’s orientation to a regime:  Partisan Linkages and Regime Alternatives
• Partisan Linkages
• institutionalized linkages are stick (25)
• some party-labor alliances have only instrumental orientation toward democracy
• Marxist and Socialist will work in democracy on their way to revolution (25)
• Populist parties want outcomes, will ignore democratic process (25-26)
• Regime Alternatives
• Marxist movements may press the issue, seek revolution (26)
• labor may be OK with inclusionary authoritarian
• Peru and Bolivia, labor opposed authoritarian, but then protested and essentially undermined new, fragile democracy (Me: This is a slippery slope...protest always shocks the system, the system is always about to collapse)
• Four major patterns of Party-Labor Linkages after 1945
• Populist parties (28)
• Argentina, Mexico, Peru
• PJ had instrumental orientation to democracy, PRI weak, and APRA ambiguous
• 
  
• Marxist parties
• Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, post-1968 Peru (28)
• all had weak orientation toward liberal democracy (29)\
• Democratic Parties (29-30)
• Brazil, Venezuela, post-1989 Chile
• obviously pro-democracy
• No Linkage (30)
• Colombia
• movement fragmented, but most had instrumental orientation to democracy
• Regime Type:
• with democratic party allies labor did not support authoritarian regimes, back coups, or destabilize the government (31)
• Marxist/populist allies
• labor supported democracy when there was a threat of conservative coup
• labor ambivalent to democracy when nondemocratic-but-inclusionary regimes were possible
• BECAUSE:
• Cuba made Revolution seem possible (32)
• Lots of inclusionary, left-ish authoritarians
• Pages 32-36 = VIgnettes about each country
• Conclusion:
• labor not automatically pro-democracy
• democratic stability was facilitated by labor’s weakness in 1980s and 1990s (38)