Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Doctoral Dissertation investigates whether trade unions help or hinder economic development. Because unions affect development by creating or disrupting social stability, it is crucial to know what protest strategies unions in South Asia pursue and why they pursue them. Instead of conducting research along these lines, many scholars have relied on arguments supported by the experience of advanced industrial states. This practice has led to a lack of evidence on the subject and a paucity of theory appropriate to the South Asian context. The Principal Investigator will work to overcome this problem through an examination of the political economy of labor protest in six cities in South Asia (Calcutta, Cochin, Colombo, Madras, Bombay, and Delhi) during the period 1991-2000. This study advances the understanding of union behavior in South Asia on both theoretical and empirical fronts. First, it employs a network-based theory of union behavior, which holds that union strategies differ based on a union's degree of formalized connections to employers and institutions of the state. Unions with more ties protest less, and use routine strategies of protest. Unions without ties protest more, utilizing one of two alternatives: extreme acts of violence or Scottian "weapons of the weak." This higher volume of alternative protest strategies disrupts economic development. Evidence to test the theory will come from a) hundreds of interviews with union leaders, government officials, and managers, b) descriptions of thousands of protest events as reported in the Indian and Sri Lankan press and c) two surveys of employers and investors. The relationship between the network ties of unions and the strike tactics they pursue will be tested with Ordinary Least Squares cross-sectional regression models. In these models, measures of strategies and volume of strike protest will be the dependent variables and measures of ties to parties and unions will be the primary independent variables of interest. The impact of protest strategies on economic performance will be assessed through a variety of methods. These will include: 1) a survey of representatives of private sector firms in India; 2) a survey of foreign investors in India; 3) interviews with employers in India; and 4) firm-level statistical models of absenteeism and productivity.