Methodological Innovations in Comparative Research on Labor

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

With the global decline of labor unions, many scholars have shifted away from labor politics and taken on other issues that seem to be more politically salient. This panel showcases contemporary research on labor politics that adopts state-of-the-art research methods and uses innovative approaches to tackle the changing ways unions and workers continue to be politically salient. Drawing on different world regions in both the Global North and the Global South, and building on the rich tradition of research on labor in comparative politics, we consider questions about how unions engage in politics, the role of gender in the labor movement, the rise of platform workers, labor resistance to authoritarianism, and the moral economy of public sector workers. This panel also showcases the ways in which qualitative research methods can be innovative in the ways they conduct comparative analysis and engage in process tracing, along with the ways that observational data and experimental methods can shed new light on new – and fundamentally important – questions related to how workers shape politics.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Cosponsor

• Related Groups / Labor Politics

Individual Presentations

• Corporatist Breakdowns as Localized Sites of Resistance to Authoritarianism - Matthew Thomas Lacouture, Wayne State University

• To Be or Not to Be an Employee: Categorization of Platform Workers - Jimena Valdez, King's College London; Angela Garcia Calvo

• Attitudes towards Education and Unions: Experimental Evidence from Mexico - Mart Trasberg, Tecnologico de Monterrey; Christopher Chambers-Ju, University of Texas, Arlington

• Labor and Gender: Teachers in Comparative Perspective - Julia Smith Coyoli, Harvard University

• Research Funders and Framing Economic Opportunity: Conflicts of Interest - Neil Kraus, University of Wisconsin, River Falls

Chair

• Allison D. Evans University of Nevada, Reno

Discussant

• Jessica Rich Marquette University