cite: Ahumada2023
author: Ahumada, P. P.
year: 2023
title: "Trade union strength, business power, and labor policy reform: The cases of Argentina and Chile in comparative perspective"
publisher: International Journal of Comparative Sociology
uri: https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231163846
pubtype: article
discipline: sociology

country: global
period: 2009-2017
maxlength:
targeting:
group:
data: time-series cross-sectional database for collective labour rights and class power disparity

design: quasi-experimental
method: OLS; Arellano estimator
sample: 78
unit: country
representativeness: regional
causal: 0 # 0 correlation / 1 causal

theory: power resource theory
limitations: limited 2-observation dataset per country; potential remaining measurement bias due to concurrent shocks
observation:
  - intervention: collective action (unionization)
    institutional: 1
    structural: 0
    agency: 0
    inequality: income
    type: 0 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal
    indicator: 1 # 0 absolute / 1 relative
    measures: Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining (FACB) and violation index coding
    findings: more unequal political power distribution hinders processes of collective organisation
    channels:
    direction: # -1 neg / 0 none / 1 pos
    significance: # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg

notes:
annotation: |
  A study on the effects of unequal distributions of political power on the extent and provision of collective labour rights.
  It is a combination of quantitative global comparison with qualitative case studies for Argentina and Chile.
  It finds that, for societies in which power is more unequally distributed, collective bargaining possibilities are more limited and weaker.
  It suggests that, aside from a less entrenched trade unionization in the country, the primary channel for the its weakening are that existing collective labour rights are often either restricted or disregarded outright.
  Employers were restricted in their ability to effectively conduct lobbying, and made more vulnerable to what the authors suggest are 'divide-and-conquer' strategies by government with a strongly entrenched trade unionization, due to being more separate and uncoordinated.
  A limit is the strong institutional context of the two countries which makes generalizable application of its underlying channels more difficult to the overarching quantitative analysis of inequality outcomes,
  which retains a potential for measurement bias due to country-level concurrent shocks.