Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and Southern Europe

Recent studies of democratization emphasize elite strategic choice but do not easily accommodate collective actors and mass protest. Focusing on unions and labor-affiliated parties, we argue that the labor movement often played a central role. In some cases union-led protest was an important factor in provoking authoritarian extrication. It was also often crucial in moving the transition forward. Finally, labor-based organizations often won a place in the negotiations and expanded the scope of contestation in the new democratic regime.

Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and Southern Europe’, RuthBerinsCollier and JamesMahoneyComparative Politics, 29 (3) (1997): 285–303. The article first appeared in Comparative Politics and is reprinted with permission from Comparative Politics, City University of New York.
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles