This chapter introduces the central puzzle driving the study: Why are Tunisian unions militant and political in their protest behavior, while their Moroccan counterparts remain apolitical and moderate? It outlines the book’s core argument, emphasizing how authoritarian policies of labor exclusion or incorporation shape unions’ interests and capacities by influencing their relationships with political elites and their internal organization. The chapter reviews the current state of research on the topic, situating the study within broader debates on labor politics, authoritarianism, and regime change. It concludes with a justification of the case selection and an overview of the empirical methods guiding the analysis.

Americans’ zeal for mobility intensified after the Civil War, and self-help recipes offered ways to achieve it. But “self-help” is not the same as “self-made,” as Frederick Douglass explained. Many argued that individuals and communities benefit through mutual assistance. People outside of the mainstream who engaged in collective self-help were often undermined by powerful authorities who attacked communal codes. In 1887, federal legislation further dispossessed Native Americans with the Dawes Severalty Act in the name of individualism. In 1892, Pittsburgh’s highly collaborative industrialists suppressed labor organization using their collective resources of law and armed force. Collective self-help was central to African Americans’ efforts to improve their lives despite the weight of discriminatory laws and social bigotry. The motto “Lifting as We Climb” reflected their sense of mutual obligation. Storytellers in the mainstream rebuffed others’ ethos of collective self-help while claiming self-made success for those they championed. "Positive thinkers" such as Dale Carnegie promised success for those who "believed" enough. "Self-made" success was deeply embedded in 1920s culture.

A lack of technical expertise and an escalating repressive response to labor movement opponents undermined the legal promise of the KCIR. In early KCIR opinions, Judge Huggins endorsed living and fair wage doctrines, and equal pay for women doing the same work as men. He virtually commandeered the milling industry to prevent opportunistic layoffs and price gouging. But the KCIR lacked economic expertise and frequently made serious miscalculations that weakened its wage awards. It also avoided jurisdiction in major disputes. Coal miners, by sustaining a strong campaign of disobedience, divided key figures in the state government and provoked repressive responses that politicized the court’s work. By the time of the 1922 railroad strikes, the KCIR was, to all appearances, Governor Allen’s tool, wielded against strikers, the surging Ku Klux Klan, and his own best friend, William Allen White. After the 1922 gubernatorial election, newly elected Democratic Governor Jonathan Davis, though unable to abolish the Court, was able to divide it, and to weaken the state’s defense of it in the face of growing federal judicial scrutiny.

Circumstances for labor after the pandemic resemble those of the early 1920s: fragmented, labor-unfriendly law has severely curbed the growth of unions under economic conditions and a climate of public opinion remarkably favorable to new organizing. Supreme Court rulings on contracts, employment, unions, and administrative power are restoring many features of law to the conditions before the New Deal. States are the most promising governmental level for protecting organizing and widening its reach in the immediate future; reformers of the 1920s provide a model for an engaged approach to scholarship that can shape state policy. Revisiting the state legal and policy history of the early twentieth century is urgently needed to prepare for foreseeable effects of further Supreme Court reaction, and to explore the era’s remarkable diversity of policy design, which may bring to light both ideas and dormant law useful in addressing labor’s contemporary challenges.

This chapter presents qualitative case studies of the dramatically different political dynamics of TPP and TTIP negotiations. Why was lobbying so much more contentious over TPP while lobbying over TTIP was muted and almost entirely in favor of the agreement? The chapter traces the development of industry and labor union positions on each agreement, showing how the effects of endowments-based, inter-industry trade on the basis of comparative advantage (much more prevalent with TPP partners) serves to unify industries and unions around their particular position, facilitating strong collective action. With TTIP, the chapter shows how internationally engaged firms were highly motivated to lobby in favor of increased market access and the removal of regulatory barriers, while domestic-oriented firms either sat out of the political process entirely or formed cross-sectoral ad hoc coalitions. These cases elucidate how and why actors came to these decisions.

Chapter 3 develops a theory of the domestic politics of intra-industry trade. It argues that changes in the nature of trade away from endowments-based trade to two-way trade within industries change the structure of preferences over trade policy and the way that actors mobilize politically in order to influence trade policy. This, in turn, affects trade policy outcomes and the ease with which trade agreements are concluded. First, I argue that the distributional effects of intra-industry trade drive a wedge through industry preferences over trade policy. As intra-industry trade increases, globalized firms support openness, and smaller, domestic-oriented firms within the same industry support protection. Second, these heterogeneous firm preferences change the ability of industries to overcome collective action problems and organize politically to influence trade policy. I argue that industry associations are hamstrung in their ability to lobby while individual firms have a greater incentive to lobby alone for their preferred policies. Third, exporters will overwhelm domestic-oriented firms in their ability to lobby, and as a result, tariffs will be lower in industries with higher intra-industry trade, though this may not be the case with non-tariff barriers to trade.

Corporations and other powerful contemporary institutions take decisions that increasingly impact the possibilities for well-being not only of those who work or live within them and are governed by them but also of distant people who are deeply affected by their functioning. This democratic deficit raises the question of whether the workers and others who are so affected should have a say in the policies that set the basic conditions for their own livelihoods and flourishing. This chapter sketches an understanding of the scope of the All-Affected Principle, taking it as an important addition to the “common activities” principle that requires democratic rights for the members of an institution or community. It proposes that both principles require democratic management (or “workplace democracy”) within firms, and suggests that the All-Affected Principle is especially apt for addressing the exogenous effects of decisions on people beyond the firm, or on distant people impacted by the institutions of global governance. The chapter goes on to consider applications of the All-Affected Principle for other labor rights under capitalism, including the right to form unions, support for care work, and for the unemployed.

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on labor politics, social movements, and political parties, and locates the main argument in this literature. It operationalizes the two organizational traits, hierarchical relations and factionalism, to show how they produce three strategies. It concludes by laying out the research methods used to carry out the analysis and reach these conclusions.

This chapter analyzes the organizational prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism, by charting changes in the organizational structure of the National Educational Workers Union (SNTE) of Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. It examines the threats to the corporatist model posed by the dissident movement and the regime response to help the union leadership regain control. President Carlos Salinas sheltered the union from the potentially disruptive effects of education decentralization policies and strengthened SNTE with policies to improve teacher pay. These concessions shaped the union’s internal organization, providing the resources Elba Esther Gordillo needed to build a dominant faction. The consolidation of power in the national union leadership was crucial for the strategy of instrumentalism.

This chapter considers insights from the argument that extend to a broader set of cases, given the global scope of teacher mobilization. It analyzes the shadow cases of teachers in Chile (leftism), Peru (movementism), and Indonesia (instrumentalism) to again demonstrate the crucial importance of union organizations. Finally, it considers avenues for future research on education policymaking, interest representation, and labor politics. A more comparative approach to the study of education is needed in political science to illuminate the different dynamics unfolding in public school systems in countries around the world.

This chapter analyzes the evolution of the Federation of Colombian Educators (FECODE) in the 1980s and 1990s, to show how and why factionalism took hold. It first examines the Pedagogical Movement of the 1980s, a teaching-oriented social movement that reveals a fundamental split between the radical and moderate lefts. This movement sheds light on why the union was initially included in policy negotiations. It then examines broader changes in teacher–state relations that culminated in FECODE’s role in negotiating an education decentralization package that strengthened the national executive committee. The last section analyzes how the political opening contributed to more hierarchical relations and deepening political divisions.

This chapter provides an overview of the book. It presents the outcome of interest: the political strategies of teachers or the different ways that teachers mobilize in politics. These strategies are referred to as instrumentalism (strategic alliances), movementism (recurrent protests), and leftism (alliances with left parties). The chapter explains the significance of these strategies in relation to the labor movement and education politics, and it introduces the main argument. This chapter shows that examining the ways in which teachers mobilize in politics helps to shed light on normative questions about how they shape education policy and democratic governance.

This chapter argues that the organizational structure of the Argentine teachers’ confederation (CTERA), with power rooted in provincial and municipal actors, is crucial for explaining why teachers engaged in ongoing protests. It examines the process of union rebuilding in the wake of democratization, after harsh repression during the military regime. Even if newly elected leaders offered little support to the union because of the debt crisis, union leaders made some progress in consolidating CTERA through their own initiatives. The chapter then turns to decentralization under President Carlos Menem as a point of inflection. This undermined national union leaders, weakening their hold on the base. Once organizational hierarchies were weakened, movementism became the union’s political strategy.