The Rise of Public Sector Unions in the Twenty-FirstCentury: A Theoretical,Mixed-Methods Approachwith Evidence from Argentina

Abstract

Public sector unions are increasingly becoming the hegemonic contemporary labor actorin terms of membership and militancy in both advanced and emerging economies.However, political economy lacks a unified theoretical approach to study mobilizationby state unions. The analysis of public sector union politics has been largely separatedby regional (United States vs. Europe vs. Global South) and disciplinary (American politicsvs. comparative politics/political sociology) divides. We contend that though both publicand private workers belong to the subaltern classes, public sector union politics andmobilization have different foundations than in the private sector. Unlike private unions,state labor mobilization is essentially driven by what we call the“reverse economic cycle”(militancy increases in bad—rather than good—economic times), by the legal enforce-ment of bargaining rights (which in contrast to the private sector substantially variesacrossandwithindemocracies), and by the likelihood of a political exchange betweenlabor and the government. Argentine teachers between 2006 and 2019 provide anideal laboratory to test this argument through a multilevel (i.e., national and subnational),mixed-methods strategy, which includes comparative and statistical assessments.