Elite Preferences in Shaping Labor Empowerment: Political Practices and Biases

• In Event: Political Incorporation: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Implications

Abstract

Empowered inclusion is defined as one of the main problems a political system needs to solve if it is to function democratically (Warren 2017). Empowered inclusion requires the legitimation of subordinate groups, such as organized labor. Mechanisms for empowered inclusion are deployed depending on how governments and parties in general manage to perceive alternative power constellations and their balance. Changes in power constellations produce tradeoffs about the political risks of empowering labor. While it can enhance the mobilization capacity of certain actors, it can also entail the risk of undercutting the influence of constituted powers. Party positioning over empowering inclusion is influenced by an anchoring bias. Applied to the problem of the empowerment of labor, this anchoring bias suggests that beliefs about the policy space available for empowering inclusion is shaped by the constraints and opportunities associated with historically constructed relationships between labor, parties, employers on the basis of long-term political practices, which affects labor political legitimacy.

This paper explores how elite preferences toward the empowerment of labor are shaped and evolve in unequal contexts, comparing the experiences of Chile, Portugal and Uruguay during the 20th century. It discusses long-term political practices associated with the empowered inclusion of labor. Drawing from the literature on democratization, it theorizes on how political practices addressing empowered inclusion are directly related to the problem of legitimacy, or the degree to which labor organizations are valued for themselves and considered right and proper as political actors (Lipset 1959, 71) : the practices of recognition, representation and joining.

Author

• Juan Ariel Bogliaccini, Universidad Católica del Uruguay