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Lisa Anderson (editor)
1999
5. Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and Southern Europe
Ruth Berins Collier and James Mahoney
The study of late-twentieth-century democratic transitions has become a major topic in comparative politics, and one particular analytic framework, which gives primacy to elite strategic choice, has become virtually hegemonic. 1 Despite a number of critiques, this approach continues to shape scholarly understandings of the recent process of democratization. Yet a single framework cannot possibly embrace the whole panoply of issues raised by these transitions. An alternative line of analysis not easily accommodated within the dominant account is the role of collective actors. Contra the dominant paradigm, the present study explores the role of one particular collective actor, the organized labor movement, in recent democratic transitions in South America and southern Europe.
Focusing on collective action undertaken by unions and labor-affiliated parties, we argue that the labor movement often played an important role in recent transitions. Labor was not limited to an “indirect” role, in which protest around workplace demands was answered through cooptive inclusion in the electoral arena. Rather, the labor movement was one of the major actors in the political opposition, explicitly demanding a democratic regime. In some cases union-led protest for democracy contributed to a climate of ungovernability and delegitimation that led directly to a general destabilization of authoritarian regimes. Moreover, continual protest, rather than creating an authoritarian backlash, kept the transition moving forward. Finally, while the protest of other groups also put the regime on the defensive, labor-based organizations went further in two ways: they often won a place in the negotiations, and they expanded the scope of contestation in the successor regime.
The dominant paradigm has built upon the founding essay by O’Donnell and Schmitter, which emphasizes the role of leadership and elite interaction. While that essay suggests that “the greatest challenge to the transitional regime is likely to come from... the collective action of the working class,” it also emphasizes the ephemeral nature of the “popular upsurge” and the subsequent “decline of the people.” 2 Other comparative analyses and theoretical accounts, focusing more exclusively on elite interaction, have not picked up on this theme. This article argues that union-led protest was much more central to the democratization process than implied by an elite-centric perspective, which sees labor’s role primarily as altering the strategic environment of elite negotiators and theoretically underrates the role of mass opposition, labor protest, and collective actors generally.
Three related points can be made about the overall perspective of this “transitions literature.” First, it has emphasized leadership and crafting, thus signaling the importance of individual rather than collective actors. Second, it tends to define actors strategically (for example, hardliners and softliners) with respect to their position in the “transition game,” thus sidelining questions about class-defined actors. Third, despite an emphasis on government-opposition negotiations, it has tended to be state-centric, thus subordinating social actors; scholars have tended to classify transitions either as initiated and to some degree controlled by incumbents or as resulting from regime collapse seen in terms of a state-centric image of implosions. 3 Therefore, the dominant framework is not very useful for present purposes because its basic theoretical assumptions and orienting concepts almost preclude the problematization of the labor movement and collective action in the first place.
Exploring five of the eleven recent South American and southern European transitions, those which have become particularly important points of reference in the literature, we elaborate two patterns of democratization that depart from the standard account (see table 5.1).
| Table 5.1: Patterns of Democratization | |
| Destabilization/Extrication | Transition Game |
| Authoritarian Incumbents | |
| No project; defensive exit | Limited democracy project; negotiated exit |
| Labor Movement | |
| Destabilizes authoritarian regime; triggers transition | Derails incumbent project; advances transition |
| Cases | |
| Spain 1977 Peru 1980 Argentina 1983 |
Uruguay 1984 Brazil 1985 |
Both patterns suggest that the labor movement was more central to the politics of democratization than has been recognized and that its role often began earlier and continued to the end. The first pattern is the biggest departure in terms of the countries it groups together and the characterization of the transitions: in the pattern of destabilization/extrication, collective protest, within which labor protest was prominent, destabilized and delegitimated the authoritarian regime. Authoritarian incumbents adopted no transition project prior to this destabilization, and, instead of elite negotiation, the transition is better characterized as forced retreat. In the second pattern, transition game, the incumbents adopted a legitimation project, but this project was derailed. Subsequently, collective protest, in which the labor movement had a prominent role, helped to reshape the transition and keep it moving forward. In both patterns, collective action secured the legalization of labor-affiliated parties, which otherwise might have fallen victim to elite negotiation.
The present analysis adopts a different temporal conceptualization from the prevailing framework, which starts with divisions in the state and ensuing rule changes. That conceptualization reinforces the emphasis on state and elite actors and effectively makes questions about the origins of state divisions exogenous. By contrast, this article explores the origins of these divisions. Furthermore, analyses within the dominant framework concentrate on the final stage of the transition. We see this stage as a closing end-game, necessarily dominated by elites establishing rules for the actual transfer of power and designing the institutions of new democracies. Our emphasis is again on an earlier period, on the decision of authoritarian actors to exit and on the effective ceding of control to opposition or elected authorities, even if the outgoing incumbents still attempt, sometimes successfully, to exert influence.
Destabilization/ Extrication
In Peru, Argentina, and Spain, union-led protests were crucial in destabilizing authoritarianism and opening the way for democratization. Authoritarian incumbents had not formulated a reform project when labor took the offensive in strikes and protests against the regime. Incumbents were unable to ignore such opposition or formulate a response to these challenges. In each case, the regime was destabilized, and incumbents made the decision to relinquish power, clearly pursuing a defensive extrication in which the goal was ultimately to step down and salvage whatever terms they could. These terms varied. The Peruvian and particularly the Argentine military incumbents came away with much less than the Spanish civilians, who were able to transform themselves into democratic actors. In Peru, labor protest propelled the regime into crisis, and following a successful general strike in 1977 the government moved quickly to announce elections for a constituent assembly which assumed direction of the transition. In Argentina, the human rights movement helped galvanize opposition to authoritarianism. But the issue of union power had divided the military from the beginning, and labor protest was important in preventing the consolidation of the military regime. With the failure of the Malvinas invasion, intended to forestall the regime crisis, the government quickly called for the elections that marked the regime transition. In Spain, labor protest produced a severe challenge to the regime even before the death of Franco and undermined the initial Francoist and post-Franco responses. Suárez then came to power and immediately built a consensus for a transition election. In all these cases, negotiations between the authoritarian government and the prodemocratic opposition parties continued after the extrication decision, and these discussions included left and labor-affiliated parties.
Peru
Unlike most cases, the authoritarian regime in Peru did not initially engage in the systematic repression of labor. 4 Rather, during the government of General Velasco (1968–1975) Peruvian authoritarianism had a distinctly “populist” character in which labor organizing was strongly encouraged. Nevertheless, by 1973 organized labor moved increasingly into opposition in conjunction with several factors—the onset of a severe economic downturn, increasing attempts to replace the Communist-led union federation (CGTP) with a state-controlled one (CERP), and the grave illness of General Velasco. In that year strikes increased substantially (roughly double the average for the previous five years), creating a climate of instability and facilitating the fall of Velasco’s government in August 1975. 5
Under the subsequent government of Morales Bermúdez, state-labor relations quickly became antagonistic, and organized labor emerged as the major antiauthoritarian actor. The new administration moved sharply away from Velasco’s populism, adopting antilabor policies and carrying out repression more characteristic of other authoritarian regimes. In the second half of 1976 the labor movement responded with a series of strikes, which symbolized a new posture of direct and confrontational opposition against the authoritarian regime.
The single most important event in triggering the transition of 1980 was the general strike of July 19, 1977 (the first since 1919 and the largest strike in Peru’s history). This strike united nearly all trade union bodies and paralyzed industrial activity in Lima. In addition to workplace concerns, the strike demanded basic democratic freedoms. “The 1977 strike carried the unmistakable message that attempts by the military to slow or avoid a transfer of power to civilians would result in only greater turmoil that would further undermine the military’s already weak credibility.” 6 The general strike reflected labor’s leadership of the antiauthoritarian opposition; other opposition groups generally mobilized later when they joined with unions to form a fractious coalition known as the “popular movement.”
In the aftermath of the strike, members of the traditional political parties and economic elite argued that a return to democracy was necessary to restore political order and economic growth. Indeed, as a result of the strike “Morales Bermúdez was obligated to announce a timetable for the return to civilian rule.” 7 In August 1977 the government lifted the state of emergency and announced constituent assembly elections for June 1978. Thus, the military decided to extricate itself and proceed with a transition. Until the assembly elections of June 1978, strikes and popular mobilization continued, including further general strikes in February, April, and May 1978.
During the final phase of transition, mobilization declined “because the assembly marked an important step in the military’s road back to the barracks—the one aim which united the fragile coalition of groups which made up the ‘popular movement.’ ” 8 Nevertheless, labor unions and labor-affiliated parties continued to play a role. APRA, the party with historic ties to the labor movement, won 35 percent of the vote to the constituent assembly. More important, with the shift in partisan affiliation of the labor movement that occurred during the military regime, the left won 33 percent. Further, the constituent assembly solicited advice from many social groups, including union leaders, and during this period the military government kept up contacts with party leaders, especially APRA’s but also including the left. In July 1979 all citizens over eighteen years of age were enfranchised, and elections in May 1980 completed the transition.
Argentina
While it is true that the democratic transition in Argentina in 1983 followed the regime’s collapse after military defeat in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas war, the standard characterization ignores the factors that brought on the military expedition in the first place. The still-limited research on this topic reveals two points at which labor may be interpreted as playing a key role. First, labor protest contributed to the division in the military between hardliners and softliners which the invasion of the Malvinas was intended to overcome. Second, some analysts maintain that labor protest directly prompted the generals to carry out the Malvinas invasion. Either way, evidence suggests that this military regime, like the one a decade earlier (1966–1973), was destabilized by labor protest. 9
The labor question had long been at the core of Argentine politics, and it remained crucial throughout the period of military rule from 1976 to 1983. The 1976 coup was itself partly a response to worker activism, and within a month of coming to power the military government considered a new labor law to deactivate the labor movement. Early military factionalism was closely linked to divisions over how to handle the labor question. One faction favored a direct assault on unions, while another favored an older pattern of state-labor relations in which labor moderation was bought with concessions granting a still limited but more positive role for unions. Under the leadership of General Videla, the hardline faction emerged dominant within the government and executed the harsh policies of political repression associated with the “dirty war,” a policy of economic liberalization that constituted an attack on labor interests, and a labor law that has been described as completing the unprecedented onslaught against labor. 10
Despite government repression, “defensive strikes” were mounted after the coup. While unions willing to cooperate with the military coalesced around the CNT, by early 1977 some unions formed the Commission of 25 to oppose the government and its project for a new labor law. In 1979 union opposition accelerated, starting with the first general strike under the military dictatorship. Centered primarily on wage policy, the strike did not yet constitute a pro-democratic movement. Soon after, however, in reaction to the new labor law, the labor movement united in the CUTA, which undertook overtly oppositional activities on multiple fronts. It announced a plan to fight the new law through “national plebiscites” in the workplace; it initiated contact with political parties, labor lawyers, and the ILO; and it developed its organization in regular labor groupings. Individual unions also stepped up their activity. Although the CUTA soon split, the oppositionist CGT “displayed growing boldness, worked to develop thicker organization networks through contact with various actors within society, and made direct calls for a change in labor policy and of the regime itself.” 11 Thus, the unions took the lead in mobilizing opposition and attempting to coordinate other social sectors, at the same time that the political parties rejected the initiative and business groups were divided.
Open divisions within the ruling authoritarian regime emerged in this context of labor protest, accompanied by economic deterioration. With growing social instability, the succession to the presidency of the softliner General Viola in March 1981 became the focus for ideologically based antagonisms among top officers. The discontent of the navy was particularly pronounced since, in addition to having been cut out of “its turn” in the succession, it was identified with a hardline approach and opposed Viola, who favored a more pragmatic economic policy and more normalized relations with conciliatory unions.
Labor opposition contributed to Viola’s inability to consolidate power. Initially divided over cooperation with Viola, the union movement reunited in an overtly oppositionist and prodemocratic stance when it became clear that Viola’s promised conciliation would not be forthcoming. In July 1981, the CGT mounted another general strike, and under its leadership the opposition fostered a climate of instability and a sense “that civil society was getting out of control” so that opposition to Viola grew even within his own branch of the military. 12 On November 7, 1981, the CGT called another mass mobilization, and two days later Viola was forced to resign.
The removal of General Viola exposed deep divisions that compromised the military’s institutional control of government. With the defeat of the softliners, the new president, General Galtieri, returned to a hardline authoritarian stance and launched the Malvinas invasion to placate the navy, which favored the venture.
According to the first argument, then “diverse views on how to deal with society produced internal divisions within the Armed Forces.” 13 Labor’s prodemocratic opposition prevented the military regime from consolidating power and led to its destabilization by reinforcing and intensifying splits within it, which the disastrous military adventure was intended to repair.
According to the second argument, labor protest directly prompted the decision of the generals to invade the Malvinas. As Ronaldo Munck put it, “the military adventure of the generals cannot be explained in purely ‘military’ terms.... It was the constant level of working-class resistance since 1976, which was moving from a defensive to an offensive phase by 1982, which alone explains [the] bizarre political gamble by the armed forces.” 14
Opposition and protest increased after the ouster of Viola. The CGT took steps to coordinate joint action with the parties, now organized in the Multipartidaria, and on March 30, 1982, along with human rights groups and political parties, it staged the largest demonstration since the 1976 coup. By this time “the COT’s massive demonstrations were threatening the stability of the government and appeared to have pushed the military rulers to take a desperate step....” 15 Three days later, Argentina invaded the Malvinas islands. In this account, in order to shore up support in the face of the opposition’s offensive, Galtieri activated plans for the invasion. By reviving a long-standing nationalist cause he hoped to rally the country behind the regime. 16
In either interpretation, the invasion was a desperate move to preserve a regime already in deep trouble, and pressure from the CGT was, directly or at a step removed, a major source of the problem. The invasion was launched either to address splits within the military exacerbated by labor protest or to deal with the challenge of accelerating popular mobilization in opposition to the authoritarian regime in which the CGT played a central initiating and coordinating role.
The military gamble failed. Not only did Argentina lose the ensuing war against Britain, but the invasion failed to defuse labor protest. Though the labor movement supported the military campaign, it remained active in opposition to the regime throughout the war. By mid June 1982, with the loss of the war and ongoing massive mobilization, the discredited military quickly moved to extricate itself by installing a “caretaker” government and announcing that general elections would be held in October 1983.
The labor movement was an important player in the remaining phases of the transition. The interim government attempted to negotiate the military’s extrication more extensively than is generally recognized, but three successive plans to shape the subsequent government were rejected by the Multipartidaria, in which the union movement was a prominent influence. Throughout, “the junta made a special effort to negotiate the transition with Peronist union leaders.” 17 Though all these attempts came to naught, it is noteworthy that labor was the major interlocutor in these efforts. The victory of Raúl Alfonsin in the 1983 elections completed the transition.
Spain
According to most authors, Spain is a prototypical case of democratization by elite negotiations. 18 The dominant interpretation of Spain sees the democratization process as beginning roughly with the death of Franco in November 1975 and points to adept elite leadership in the ensuing uncertain environment to explain successful democratization. Particularly important was the skill of regime moderates, most notably Adolfo Suárez, in pursuing democratic negotiations simultaneously with both the moderates from the “democratic opposition” and the continuistas of the Franco establishment. Further, by pursuing these negotiations and reforms incrementally, Suárez garnered support for this carefully crafted democratization.
This interpretation misses the crucial role played by labor. 19 First, by the early 1970s, even before the death of Franco, labor pressures for an end to authoritarian rule set off a deepening regime crisis. Second, dramatic labor protests undermined attempts to establish a system of “Francoism without Franco.” Finally, once the regime was destabilized, elements of the labor movement helped define a more moderate opposition strategy that enabled Suárez to negotiate the final agreements leading up to the democratic elections of June 1977. As Maravall states:
popular pressure “from below” played a crucial part in the transition, especially that coming from the workers’ movement. It was a causal factor in the Francoist crisis, in the non-viability of any mere “liberalization” policy, in the willingness on the part of the “democratic right” to negotiate the transition and carry through reform up to the point of breaking with Francoism, and in the initiative displayed by the Left up to the 1977 elections. 20
The labor movement was in a unique position to open space within the authoritarian regime. In 1948 the Communist Party decided to use union elections to penetrate the official, corporative structure, eventually facilitating the emergence of the parallel, more oppositionist Workers’ Commissions. In different but symbiotic ways, both the legal unions and illegal Commissions became important sites of opposition and channels for undermining authoritarianism. By the 1960s it was clear that the official unions were not functioning as integrative mechanisms; the Commissions mounted sustained working-class protest; and the per capita strike rate became one of the highest in Europe. Toward the end of the decade the labor movement’s agenda increasingly turned from workplace demands to demands for broad political liberties. Its orientation also shifted toward mobilization aimed at toppling the regime; Communist Party and labor leaders began to discuss openly the possibility of a ruptura democrática (democratic rupture). With the failure of its labor project, the government was forced to choose between repression and democratic opening.
In part as a consequence of labor opposition, serious divisions emerged within the regime. Hardliners were initially dominant, and repression increased from 1967 to 1973. Franco decided to insure the future of authoritarianism through a Francoist monarchy with Juan Carlos as king. Yet repression was ineffectual in reducing social protest. During 1970 labor strikes rose to over 1,500, 21 nationalist terrorism also accelerated, and “the government had no political answer to this increasing level of conflict.” 22 Softliners became increasingly vocal in pressing for a change of policy. In late 1972 and early 1973 Franco and his prime minister, Carrero Blanco, responded in speeches that suggested that some type of political opening would be forthcoming.
Sustained labor protest in 1973 helped keep the government on the defensive in search of a new formula for stability. After the assassination of Carrero Blanco in December 1973, Franco appointed a moderate, Carlos Arias Navarro, whose strategy was to establish a dictablanda, or softer dictatorship, but labor activism prevented its stabilization. Strikes increased dramatically under Arias to the largest number in Spanish history in 1974. The strike record was again broken in 1975. In reaction to this labor protest, the hardliners retrenched, favoring a severe crackdown and driving a deeper wedge in the regime. “When the news of Franco’s illness broke... everything seemed to show that the regime was in crisis.” 23 In the opening months of 1976 labor strikes and demonstrations once again reached unprecedented levels, but in the face of this offensive “the ministry remained impotent.” 24 Labor protest thus undermined the strategy of limited liberalization pursued by Arias. When he resigned in July 1976, it had become clear that, “if a catastrophic clash between the irresistible force of the left and the immovable object of the right was to be avoided, it was essential that rapid progress be made to the introduction of democracy.” 25
By the time Suárez became prime minister, then, the labor movement had done much both to destabilize the authoritarian regime and to reject government attempts to respond in ways that fell short of democracy. It seemed clear that the government had to find some means of effecting a speedy transition. Suárez accomplished this task in about two months. He won the cabinet’s approval of a transition project that committed the government to elections within a year. Within another two months, the project was approved by the Cortes (legislature).
These events are worth pondering. The task—and triumph—of Suárez, as many have emphasized, involved nothing less than convincing the Cortes to agree to its own replacement in a very short time. How was he successful? The key question is not whether Suárez was a skilled negotiator. Rather, can what he did be seen as an extrication? Did Suárez, in other words, negotiate an extrication, even though he did it very well, with ultimately positive implications for democratic consolidation? It is difficult to imagine that an entrenched Cortes would participate so quickly in its own demise without the high level of pressure of oppositional mobilization and regime crisis. Even analysts like Linz and Stepan, who emphasize the agency of Suárez, refer to the “fear of a vacuum of authority, of a sudden transfer of power to the then quite radical opposition forces,” in prompting Suárez and the reformers to act. 26
Beyond its role in provoking the transition, labor opposition also shaped the way it unfolded. Even before Suárez came to power, the democratic opposition, led by the Communist Party, affiliated trade unions, and the Socialist Party, recognized that it could not directly overthrow the government and abandoned the strategy of ruptura democratica in favor of ruptura pactada (negotiated rupture), which envisioned a provisional government and a constituent Cortes to determine the successor regime. The reform project that Suárez proposed in October and that the Cortes passed in November 1976 paralleled this project by providing for the election of the constituent assembly, but it rejected a provisional government. Once Suárez engineered a consensus behind the transition project, the rest followed quickly according to the adopted timetable. In June 1977 free elections were held to choose the democratic Cortes, which wrote a constitution and provided the institutional structure of the new democracy.
Although in the final months of the transition labor and the left opposition lost power to the more moderate opposition, their role in bringing about and shaping the transition should not be underestimated. They precipitated the transition, and in many ways their ruptura pactada strategy gave the transition its particular form. Indeed, discussions and negotiations took place between the government and left parties, including the Communist Party, which was legalized during the transition. The argument here is not that labor single-handedly brought about the demise of authoritarianism or constructed the new democracy. Nor is it that labor was the most important of an array of players (including industrialists, students, Basque and Catalan nationalists, and the king). Nevertheless, labor exerted constant pressure on the regime for about ten years, and this pressure continued during the years of the transition itself. Despite the widely noted “moderation” of labor in these years, Pérez-Díaz notes the “explosion” in the level of industrial conflict and collective action in 1976–79 and a rise in real wages at a rate almost double the OECD average in 1973–79. 27 Certainly, Suárez used the legal instruments of the Francoist system to bring about its liquidation and demonstrated impressive leadership skill in negotiating a broad consensus around the transition. Yet to begin the story of Spanish democratization from this point is to focus on the final step of a longer process and to miss the important role of labor. Labor protest destabilized the authoritarian regime, made impossible a reform that stopped short of democratization, and thus forced incumbents to undertake a rather speedy extrication.
Transition Game
Two traits of the Uruguayan and Brazilian transitions more closely fit the standard model. First, elite strategic games involved a protracted series of moves and countermoves and formal and informal negotiations among military incumbents and party leaders. These strategic games arose in a particular context in which from the very beginning the military sought legitimation through a facade of civilian rule operating through chosen groups of politicians and a restricted electoral arena. These regimes thus embraced an incumbent project which defined a game between government and leaders of selected political parties, whether long-established (Uruguay) or newly formed under government guidance (Brazil). Second, collective action by labor organizations appeared relatively late in a larger process of civic activation and rejuvenation and followed the action of party leaders, who were the first on the scene and figured centrally in the government’s legitimation project from the beginning.
Nevertheless, this account understates the role of mass popular opposition in general and of labor protest in particular. Legitimation projects adopted by both military governments were undermined by popular opposition expressed in the limited electoral arena. A 1980 plebiscite marked the first failure of the government project of Uruguay, and opposition gains in the 1974 elections portended the failure of the government project in Brazil. Henceforth both regimes were thrown on the defensive; incumbents continually scrambled to alter their project and change the rules of the political game in the face of an opposition increasingly on the offensive. Given the pattern and target of repression, the space for social movements, and particularly for the labor movement, opened later. Once it emerged, however, labor activity was forceful in the final transition stage.
Furthermore, the activities of labor opposition undermined government attempts to control and limit the party system, created room for the entry of a political left, and were particularly important where formal (Uruguay) and informal (Brazil) negotiations between government and major party leaders could have led to an agreement to exclude left parties. Indeed, in both cases the Communist party remained banned. Nevertheless, in Brazil labor protest gave rise to a new socialist party based in the new union movement, and in Uruguay the reconstitution of the labor movement and its protest activities provided an outlet for the banned Frente Amplio, its participation in various opposition fora, and finally its legalization and participation in the final negotiations, thus allowing the stalled transition to proceed.
Brazil
In Brazil, movement toward a democratic regime was initiated autonomously by the authoritarian incumbents, who came to power in a 1964 military coup. 28 At the onset the military sought legitimation through a controlled two-party system operating in a very restricted electoral space. In 1974, after a more repressive interlude, military softliners regained the upper hand and during the presidency of General Geisel reinstituted a period of “decompression.”
With decompression, leaders of the officially recognized opposition party found space for more autonomous action and made electoral gains in 1974 and again in 1976. With the failure to engineer a political opening that would favor the progovernment party and the rise of many groups in civil society calling for a democratic transition, the military closed congress and further manipulated the electoral law to reestablish some control.
At this point, in the late 1970s, the labor movement burst onto the political scene. The more limited process of liberalization was transformed into one of democratization, in which the party and electoral systems were opened. This process ultimately culminated in the (indirect) election of a civilian president in 1985. It is difficult to determine how decisive the activities of the labor movement were in these developments, given inroads already made by the opposition party and other social groups. Nevertheless, they fundamentally shaped the transition process.
Repressed following a 1968 strike, the labor movement developed a new form of resistance in the early 1970s. By 1978, especially in the multinational automobile plants, it crystallized in the new unionism, which “signaled the existence of massive, organized discontent with the regime, and... constituted powerful evidence that democratization was necessary to resolve the potential for social conflict.” 29 The metalworkers’ strike of 1978 spread to more than one-half million workers. 30 One of the largest strike waves in Brazilian history followed it in 1979, as over three million workers participated in more than one hundred strikes. 31
This dramatic resurgence of the labor movement placed it at the forefront of a broad spectrum of social movements then emerging in opposition to the authoritarian regime. Though many of its actions began as worker demands, the protests quickly became more overtly political. Initially factory based, the movement led by labor spread in two complementary directions. The first went beyond the union sector to the larger working-class neighborhoods and communities, where labor protests won the active involvement and material support of church groups and the larger community. Second, the labor movement moved beyond narrower workers’ issues to champion the demands and concerns of the lower classes more generally. Though many groups already expressed antiauthoritarian sentiment, the labor movement identified itself with a broad constituency and played an important role in building and leading a more unified, prodemocratic mass movement. 32 In addition, labor leaders became important national political figures who articulated broad political demands.
When the government, defensively scrambling to divide the Opposition, abandoned its two-party project, unions organized an avowedly socialist Workers’ Party, further frustrating the government’s attempt to exorcise the left. This party served as an “instrument of struggle for the conquest of political power” by embracing an overtly political strategy predicated on the attainment of a democratic regime. 33 Thus, labor leadership expanded from union-based activity not only to a broader social movement, but also to a political organization. By 1983 labor mobilization culminated in a strike of over three million workers, and the following year workers participated in a massive campaign for direct presidential elections. Though the campaign was not successful in its immediate goals, it helped deepen the succession crisis faced by the regime and force the government to allow an opposition victory when the electoral college chose the first civilian president in 1985.
Hence organized labor played an important role in the Brazilian transition. It provided more than the mass pressure used by traditional party leaders in pursuing their own strategies. Labor protest and mobilization were directly responsible for expanding political and electoral space to include a new force on the left and for securing the legality and participation of the union-based Brazilian Workers’ Party.
Uruguay
Uruguay’s authoritarian regime did not originate in a definitive military coup but rather in a two-sided process in which democracy eroded and the military gradually increased its autonomy and took over as it conducted an “internal war” against urban guerrillas. The military-dominated regime thus continued to seek electoral legitimation and the collaboration of political parties. As in Brazil, the Uruguayan military committed itself to regularly scheduled elections and developed projects for a new regime. At the same time, the labor movement was an important prodemocratic actor in the transition process and figured prominently in the events leading up to the installation of a democratic regime in 1985. 34
The “gradual coup” was completed by 1973, though the military initially continued to rule behind the civilian facade of the elected president and retained its commitment to holding the elections scheduled for 1976. As the elections approached, the military abandoned that commitment and devised a new plan for “limited redemocratization” under military control and created a civilian-military body charged with drafting a constitution, which would be submitted to a plebiscite in 1980. 35 When the plebiscite was held, voters defeated the constitution, throwing the government project off track. Once again relying on party collaboration, the military initiated conversations with the traditional parties and proposed a transition in 1985 according to a new constitution it would negotiate with the parties. To rehabilitate the parties, a new law, written in collaboration with party leaders, called for primary elections in 1982. The primaries dealt the military another defeat: instead of the intended purge of the parties in favor of the collaborating factions, factions less friendly to the government were victorious.
The following years have been analyzed in terms of the “coup poker” strategies of the parties, the alternating harder and softer lines of the government, and the moves and countermoves of an elite strategic game. With stops and starts, formal negotiations took place between the military and party leaders, culminating in the 1984 Naval Club Pact, signed by the participants, who in the end included the left parties except for the Communists. In accord with the agreements laid down in the pact, elections were held later that year, and a new democratic government took power in 1985.
This standard account misses an additional story from below in which the labor movement played an important part. That organized labor was an avid prodemocratic actor can be seen in its initial resistance. The day the military made the final move to assure its political control by closing the legislature in 1973, workers began a general strike against the dictatorship, thereby emerging as the only group to register its opposition publicly. For two weeks thousands of workers occupied factories, perpetrated acts of sabotage, and closed down the economy until the strike was broken. If the labor movement was not heard from in the following years, it was due to the ensuing repression in which unions were dismantled and many leaders were arrested or forced into exile.
Mass actors reemerged in connection with three developments. The first was the stunning defeat dealt the military in the 1980 plebiscite, not because of opposition parties, which hardly had an opportunity to mobilize, but because the electorate used the vote to reject the military’s project. It has been suggested that, although unions were also severely repressed at the time, workers played an important clandestine role in mobilizing for the “no” victory. 36 Despite the appearance of “surrogates” for the exiled or imprisoned political leaders of the noncollaborating parties and factions, the plebiscite was clearly a case of mass action and victory from below.
Second, the outcome of the 1982 party primaries may have been significantly affected by union activity. A law of the previous year authorized unions at the enterprise level. Though the law was very restrictive, in a contested decision workers decided not to reject it but to use it both to organize openly and to gain some legal protection. From the outset, these enterprise unions had a democratic political program, so that the primaries took place in a period of increasing labor mobilization.
Third, and more definitively, the limited liberalization following the plebiscite created space for the opposition to mobilize. Along with the cooperativists, the union movement began to revive in 1982, first at the enterprise level and then at the national level when the Inter-Union Plenary of Workers (PIT) was formed. Linked with the grass roots, the PIT had a special capacity for mass mobilization. On May Day 1983 the PIT carried out the first major demonstration since 1973, attracting an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people, and explicitly called for the immediate return of democratic liberties. 37 The May Day demonstration catapulted the PIT to the leadership of the social movement and, according to Caetano and Rilla, represented a qualitative change in the politics of transition. 38
For the next year, collective actors, especially the PIT, set the pace and led the prodemocracy opposition. In the face of constant pressure from mass protest, the military was ultimately forced to retreat. In the beginning of 1983 the military attempted to write yet another new constitution, but by the end of the year important sectors of the military dropped the idea and began to focus instead on finding “the best exit.” 39
The general strike called by the PIT in January 1984 gave a decisive impetus to the military’s retreat. Previously, it had responded to growing mobilization with increased repression. After the strike it lifted censorship and allowed the Communist leader of the left-wing Frente Amplio to return to the country. The strike also changed the relationship between the traditional parties and the social movement. Sanguinetti, the leader of the opposition faction of the Colorado Party, in effect apologized to the PIT for his party’s opposition to the successful January strike and proposed a reorganization of the democratic opposition to coordinate the activities of the parties (including the left) and the PIT in a new Multipartidaria.
During the next months the Multipartidaria entered prenegotiations with the government, while it kept up the pressure by calling a series of symbolic one-day strikes. These strikes succeeded in pressuring the government to make concessions, including, at the end of July 1984, legalization of the Frente Amplio and its constituent parties, except for the Communist Party and the Tupamaros. Negotiations came to a rapid conclusion in the Naval Club Pact, signed in August, in which the military got very little (the most popular Blanco candidate as well as some Frentistas were excluded from running in the November transition elections). The PIT’s protests were thus important not only in pushing the transition forward, but also in forming the Multipartidaria as a more inclusive democratic opposition that negotiated the end of authoritarianism.
Conclusion
Although it would be wrong to treat labor organizations as the principal force behind democratization at the end of the twentieth century, the literature as a whole has erred in the other direction in portraying transitions as primarily an elite project, a conversation among gentlemen, with labor protest having relatively little consequence. It has done so even though case-study analyses by country experts have regularly pointed to the key role of collective action in general and labor protest in particular. Hence there is a disjuncture between the evidence presented in case-study material and the general interpretations offered in the literature on transitions.
Why have scholars who study transitions from a comparative theoretical perspective failed to recognize the importance of workers and other collective actors? Empirical oversight on the part of comparative theorists is not the reason. Our disagreement is not over the facts: we have relied on the same secondary literature as proponents of the dominant framework and, where relevant, have even used their own original research. Rather, we disagree over analytical framing. In necessarily privileging some facets of reality over others, frameworks can be useful in illuminating particular questions, but they should not be made hegemonic.
The original framework was appropriate in problematizing a leader-based strategy for achieving democratization. However, this framework does not travel well to other analytic concerns. When adopted more generally, it becomes a conceptualization of democratic transitions as fundamentally driven by and ultimately “about” intra-elite dynamics and politics within the state, while it ignores other important questions. Scholars working within the assumptions of the dominant framework lack the means to conceptualize the role of social opposition adequately, even when they clearly want to acknowledge its importance. Linz and Stepan, for example, acknowledge that Spanish political reform occurred in a “context of heightened societal pressure for, and expectations of, change” and that “popular pressure kept the transition going forward.” Yet they resist situating the role of mass pressure and collective action theoretically on a level equal to elite negotiation and designate Spain “a ‘regime initiated transition’ although under the pressure of society.” 40
In sum, our analysis has supplemented the focus on elites with one on collective action by paying particular attention to the labor movement. In initial stages of democratization, labor mobilization in the pattern of destabilization/extrication contributed to divisions among authoritarian incumbents, who previously had no transitional project. During relatively early stages in the transitions game labor protest for democracy helped to derail the legitimation projects of incumbents.
In later stages of the transition labor mobilization had two effects. First, depending on the pattern, protest provoked or quickened the transition and kept it on track. These effects were the consequence of pressure exerted to the very end. Our case evidence thus calls into question the perspective that labor restraint during the final transition phase contributes to democracy by convincing elites that democracy can lead to social and political order, thereby facilitating elite negotiations. 41 In fact, unprecedented levels of labor mobilization occurred in Spain up through the elections of 1977; labor protest in Peru continued until the constituent assembly elections; the pressure of collective action, including labor protest, accelerated in Brazil in the final stage; and the labor movement in Uruguay continued to flex its muscles through a series of one-day strikes.
Second, mobilization and protest won labor-based parties a place among the negotiators and also in the successor regimes. The Peronists in Argentina, the Spanish Communist Party, the Peruvian left, and to some degree Uruguay’s Frente Amplio all won such a place. Even in Brazil, where no negotiating role was attained, collective action underpinned the founding of the socialist Brazilian Workers’ Party. The collective action of labor movements thus played a key democratic role not only in propelling a transition, but also in expanding political space and the scope of contestation in the new democratic regime.
Endnotes
Ruth Berins Collier would like to acknowledge the support of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the National Science Foundation (Grant No. SBR-9022192). The authors would also like to thank David Collier, Giuseppe Di Palma, Robert Fishman, Guillermo O’Donnell, Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell, and Philippe Schmitter for their comments.
Note 1: The exemplar of this framework is Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). See also James Malloy and Mitchell Seligson, eds., Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987); Enrique Baloyra, ed., Comparing New Democracies: Transition and Consolidation in Mediterranean Europe and the Southern Cone (Boulder: Westview, 1987); Giuseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); John Higley and Richard Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin American and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Back.
Note 2: O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions, pp. 52, 55. Back.
Note 3: On the elaboration of Linz’s initial distinction between transition by reforma and transition by ruptura, see Juan Linz, “Some Comparative Thoughts on the Transition to Democracy in Portugal and Spain,” in Jorge Braga de Macedo and Simon Serfaty, eds., Portugal Since the Revolution: Economic and Political Perspectives (Boulder: Westview, 1981); Donald Share and Scott Mainwaring, “Transitions through Transaction: Democratization in Brazil and Spain,” in Wayne Selcher, ed., Political Liberalization in Brazil: Dynamics, Dilemmas, and Future Prospects (Boulder: Westview, 1986); Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); J. Samuel Valenzuela, “Democratic Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings: Notion, Process, and Facilitating Conditions,” in Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). Back.
Note 4: This analysis is based primarily on Nigel Haworth, “The Peruvian Working Class, 1968–1979,” in David Booth and Bernardo Sorj, eds., Military Reformism and Social Classes: The Peruvian Experience, 1968–1980 (London: Macmillan, 1983); Julio Cotter, “Military Interventions and ‘Transfer of Power to Civilians’ in Peru,” in Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Nigel Haworth, “Political Transition and the Peruvian Labor Movement,” in Edward Epstein, ed., Labor Autonomy and the State in Latin America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Henry Pease García, Los caminos del poder: Tres años de crisis en la escena política (Lima: DESCO, 1979); Cynthia McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” in Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour M. Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989); Latin American Bureau, Peru: Paths to Poverty (London: Latin American Bureau, 1985); Henry Dietz, “Elites in an Unconsolidated Democracy: Peru During the 1980s,” in Higley and Gunther, eds. Elites and Democratic Consolidation; Julio Cotler, Democracia e integración nacional (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1980). Back.
Note 5: David Scott Palmer, Peru: The Authoritarian Tradition (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 114. Back.
Note 6: Dietz, “Elites in an Unconsolidated Democracy,” p. 241. Back.
Note 7: Latin American Bureau, p. 70. Back.
Note 8: Haworth, “The Peruvian Working Class,” p. 76. Back.
Note 9: This analysis is based primarily on Gerardo Munck, “State Power and Labor Politics in the Context of Military Rule: Organized Labor, Peronism, and the Armed Forces in Argentina, 1976–1983,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1990); Andres Fontana, Fuerzas armadas, partidos politicos y transición a la democracia en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Estudios CEDES, 1984); Ariel Colombo and V. Palermo, Participación politica y pluralism en la Argentina contemporánea (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1985); Edward Epstein, “Labor Populism and Hegemonic Crisis in Argentina,” in Epstein, ed.; Ronaldo Munck, Argentina: From Anarchism to Peronism (London: Zed Books, 1987); James McGuire, “Interim Government and Democratic Consolidation: Argentina in Comparative Perspective,” in Yossi Shain and Juan Linz, eds., Interim Governments and Transitions to Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Back.
Note 10: G. Munck, “State Power and Labor Politics,” pp. 268–84. Back.
Note 11: Ibid., pp. 305–6. Back.
Note 12: Ibid., pp. 318–19. Back.
Note 14: R. Munck, Argentina: From Anarchism to Peronism, pp. 78, 79. Back.
Note 15: G. Munck, “State Power and Labor Politics,” p. 327. Back.
Note 16: R. Munck, Argentina: From Anarchism to Peronism, p. 79. Back.
Note 17: McGuire, “Interim Government and Democratic Consolidation,” p. 189. Back.
Note 18: See, for example, Huntington, The Third Wave, pp. 125–27; Share and Mainwaring; Linz, “Some Comparative Thoughts”; Kenneth Medhurst, “Spain’s Evolutionary Pathway from Dictatorship to Democracy,” in Geoffrey Pridham, ed., New Mediterranean Democracies: Regime Transition in Spain, Greece, and Portugal (Totowa: Frank Cass, 1984); Di Palma, To Craft Democracies, pp. 6–8; Richard Gunther, “Spain: The Very Model of the Modern Elite Settlement,” in Higley and Gunther, eds.; Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe Schmitter, “Modes of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe,” International Social Science Journal, 128 (May 1991); Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Back.
Note 19: In addition to the sources in the previous note, this discussion is based primarily on José Maravall, The Transition to Democracy in Spain (London: Croom Helm, 1982); José Maravall, Dictatorship and Dissent (London: Tavistock, 1978); Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurua, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979); Paul Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (London: Methuen, 1986); Robert Fishman, Working-Class Organization and the Return of Democracy in Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Victor Pérez-Díaz, The Return of Civil Society: The Emergence of Democratic Spain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Joe Foweraker, “The Role of Labor Organizations in the Transition to Democracy in Spain,” in Robert Clark and Michael Haltzel, eds., Spain in the 1980s: The Democratic Transition and a New International Role (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1987); José Félix Tezanos, Ramón Cortarelo, and Andrés de Blas, eds., La transición democrática española (Madrid: Sistema, 1989). Back.
Note 20: Maravall, The Transition to Democracy, p. 14. Back.
Note 21: Maravall, Dictatorship and Dissent, p. 33. Back.
Note 22: Car and Fusi, Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy, p. 192. Back.
Note 23: Ibid., pp. 205–6. Back.
Note 25: Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain, p. 91. Back.
Note 26: Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, p. 92. Back.
Note 27: Pérez-Díaz, the Return of Civil Society, pp. 238–39, 242. Back.
Note 28: This analysis is based primarily on Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985); Gay Seidman, Manufacturing Militance: Workers’ Movements in Brazil and South Africa, 1970–1985 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Margaret Keck, The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1989); Maria Helena Moreira Alves, “Trade Unions in Brazil: A Search for Autonomy and Organization,” in Epstein, ed. Labor Autonomy and the State in Latin America. Back.
Note 29: Keck, The Workers’ Party, p. 42. Back.
Note 30: Alves, State and Opposition, pp. 194–97. Back.
Note 32: Seidman, Manufacturing Militance, p. 197. Back.
Note 34: This analysis is based primarily on Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla, Breve historia de la dictadura (1973–1985) (Montevideo: CLAEH/Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1991); Luis González, Political Structures and Democracy in Uruguay (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991); Charles Gillespie. Negotiating Democracy: Politicians and Generals in Uruguay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Juan Rial, Partidos políticos, democracia y autoritarismo (Montevideo: CESU/Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1984); Gerónimo De Sierra, El Uruguay post-dictadura: Estado-política-actores (Montevideo: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República, 1992): Martin Gargiulo, “The Uruguayan Labor Movement in the Post-Authoritarian Period,” in Epstein, ed.; Jorge Chagas and Mario Tonarelli, El sindicalismo Uruguayo bajo la dictadura, 1973–1984 (Montevideo: Ediciones del Nuevo Mundo, 1989). Back.
Note 35: Rial, Partidos politicos, vol. I, pp. 73–74. Back.
Note 36: De Sierra, El Uruguay post-dictadura p. 218. Back.
Note 37: Ibid., p. 220; Gillespie, Negotiating Democracy, p. 131. Back.
Note 38: Caetano and Rilla, Breve historia de la dictadura, p. 91. Back.
Note 40: Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, p. 88 (emphasis added). Back.
Note 41: In addition to O’Donnell and Schmitter, see especially J. Samuel Valenzuela, “Labor Movements in Transitions to Democracy: A Framework for Analysis,” Comparative Politics, 21 (July 1989). Back.
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