Evaluation of Sabina Avdagic’s thesis Shaping the Paths to Labor Weakness: The
Interplay of Political Strategies and Institutional Structures in Post-Communist Central
Europe
By Laszlo Bruszt
What are the sources of variation in the degree of weakening organized labor in the
Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland during the period of economic transformation? In
her thesis, Sabina Avdagic discusses this question with the ambition to offer new tools to
measure comparative labor strength and an innovative analytical framework to explain
variation in it. My overall evaluation of her thesis is the following:
The thesis is an important contribution to the study of the evolution of state-labor
relations in postcommunist countries. It offers new tools to analyze variation in the fate
of unions and a coherent and innovative analytical framework to study the sources of
variation. Based on the critical overview of the literature, it offers a sophisticated set of
interrelated measures of defining strength of organized labor that is transferable and can
also be used in other contexts to study variation in labor strength. It contributes to the
broader theoretical debate on the role of institutions and of agency, offers insightful
arguments to refine the concept of path dependency and strengthens the arguments of
those who stress the importance of endogenous sources of reproduction and change
within the historical institutionalist approach. The thesis offers a coherent analytical
framework to account for variation in labor strength that is open for scholarly discussion.
As such, the thesis represents a scholarly contribution and will certainly elicit further
fruitful debate on the issues it discusses. If the author would like to publish the results of
her research in a book (and I would strongly encourage her to do so) she will have to
modify and refine several parts of the thesis to strengthen its major argument.
2. Detailed comments
The thesis is convincing in identifying variation in labor weakening during economic
transformation. It is less convincing, however. in its argument that this is variation in
degree and not variation in the kind of weakening. This does not weaken the overall
argument of the thesis that seeks to explain variation in labor strength but the author has
either to strengthen her argument that she actually found variation in degree, or she has to
opt for the second alternative and take variation in the kind of weakening as the
explanandum.
The chapter on defining strength of organized labor is one of the strongest parts of the
thesis. It starts with the warning of the author that this is ‘a highly contested issue in labor
politics and industrial relations literature’, a field where quoting Cameron, ‘the very
notion of strength and power is notoriously illusory, imprecise, and difficult to specify”.
It ends with an innovative multi-dimensional framework for the study of variation in the
capacity of unions to keep their members, solve problems of coordination and rivalry
within the trade union sector, influence policies through tripartite structures and defend
the interests of their members at the different levels of collective bargaining in different
legal frameworks. The author does a very good job here by carefully analyzing the
strengths and weaknesses of the different measures and offering ways to improve them.
When she applies these measures she convincingly proves the existence of variation
among the three cases.
Did she find variation in degree or variation in kind of labor weakening? I am not
completely convinced about her answer yet. The first dimension that she uses (declining
unionization level) will perhaps be the most contested one out of the four that she
employs to compare her cases. The author herself cites several problems associated with
the availability and quality of data and she presents several good arguments about the
limitations of this measure for the comparison of labor strength.
The second and third dimensions (degree of fragmentation, union cooperation and
influencing policies through tripartite structures) is much more convincing and it is here
where the author could easily prove that the three cases differ in degree. In the second
dimension, however, the authors’ argumentation is somewhat sketchy. While the Czech
case clearly differs from the other two, the presentation of the two cases with fragmented
unions could definitely be strengthened. To do that, the author has to identify events
when competition and rivalry prevented unions to get gains in tripartite arrangements, or
when successful collaboration among competing unions was the source of getting
concessions. According to the author, the Hungarian unions showed only very recently
any intention to act in a more concerted way. This case is contrasted with the Polish
unions that have not shown any readiness to cooperate. I disagree with this presentation
of the difference between the two cases. In Hungary, there were at least some cases
during the 1990s when successful collaboration among competing unions was the source
of getting concessions. Examples include some of the income policy package agreements
or the Labor Code where the competing unions (for different reasons) have demanded in
unison and with success the keeping of the collective bargaining rights with the
workplace level unions. In Poland, on the other hand, I do not know of events when
successful collaboration among competing unions was the source of getting concessions
and the decade was full of events when competition and rivalry prevented unions to get
gains in tripartite arrangements.
The fourth dimension is the most structured and here we can also find strong variation
among the three cases. Here, while the relative advantage of the Czech unions can be
demonstrated, the difference between the Hungarian and the Polish unions seems to be
more of a kind then of a degree. What makes me hesitant is the table on the provisions
covered by collective agreements. While the weak Hungarian trade unions could clearly
get more at national level tripartite negotiations, from this table it seems to me that the
Polish unions can get more at the workplace level.
The analytical framework first spelled out in chapter three and then refined in chapter
eight is the strongest part of the thesis. The discussion of structure and agency and of
historical institutionalism in chapter three is both insightful and innovative. At the
discussion of the building blocks of the model, the author is at her best. The argument
that she develops in chapter three and then refines in chapter eight to account for
variation in organized labor strength could, however, still be strengthened.
First, I accept that the balance of power between government and trade unions plays the
most important role in the choice of the strategy of the government. But (actually in line
with the authors’ critique of comparative institutionalists) I do not think that there is some
balance of power ‘out there’ that shapes actors strategies. The author defines balance of
power both in terms of ‘objective indicators of strength surrounding a specific formative
moment, and the perceptions formed on the basis of previous interactions’. In chapter
eight the same ‘objective’ factors come back to account for variation in initial
government strategies, completely in line with the previous argument. The ‘objective’
factors she cites (degree of union fragmentation, the nature of inter-union dynamics and
the existence of formal ties between unions and political parties) are of course all
important. But with this formulation of the model the author comes close to the static
neo-corporatist argument that she rightly rejects later in her thesis. By including the
strategies of unions, the model could become more dynamic and the argument of the
thesis could become stronger. From her analysis of the country cases actually one could
get exactly to this point. Accordingly, in the initial strategies of the governments the
perceptions of the relative balance of forces played the dominant role. These perceptions
were, however, shaped not alone by the ‘objective’ factors of labor strength but by the
strategies of unions vis-à-vis the government and to each other. The factors that the
author uses in her model were largely mediated/activated by the strategies of unions.
(E.g.: in Hungary, the degree of union fragmentation and the nature of inter-union
dynamics could explain the strategies of government better if we also know that some of
the unions have asked for government intervention to solve inter union conflicts, or that
the biggest union confederation was ready at times to have separate negotiations with the
government. In Poland it was the submissiveness of the unions that shaped initial
strategies and in the Czech Republic the unity and the distancing strategy of the unions
from political parties). The ‘objective’ factors, to put it yet in another way were ‘enacted’
by the actors.
The authors’ argument that institutions are continuously contested by actors in a field that
is shaped by the outcomes of previous struggles is elegant and convincing. I also accept
her major theoretical point that the study of institutions has to be sensitive to the coexistence of mechanisms of reproduction and mechanisms of change. Her arguments on
the mechanisms of reproduction are strong, convincing and innovative. The way she
presents the mechanisms of change within the path is however weaker. It is clear from the
thesis that the author put the stress on ‘getting the paths’ right’, to convincingly
demonstrate that several mechanisms are at work that push together in divergent
directions the three cases and they keep them there. Here she is convincing, her
mechanisms of reproduction work and they work perhaps too strongly. She cites, of
course mechanism of change, both endogenous and exogenous ones. In the theoretical
parts in chapters three, eight and nine she repeatedly stresses the need to be sensitive to
the co-existence of mechanisms of reproduction and mechanisms of change. In the
empirical parts and in the comparative chapter, however, only the initial change in paths
is analyzed and the reader could easily get the impression that actually here we have to do
with a near perfect lock-in of the actors. After the early nineties, we do not get detailed
analysis of cases for changes in the paths. The author provides a fine theoretical analysis
of formative moments and the different factors that could account for partial modification
of paths through changed strategies. Her discussion of layering is illuminative and shows
that her ambition is the demontration of the co-existence of mechanisms of reproducation
and mechanisms of change – and not solely the existence of divergent pathways. This is a
more ambitious undertaking and I think, that her cases allow for such analysis.
The positioning of the arguments of the thesis in the broader literature is generally fine.
However, in chapter 8 at the discussion of alternative explanations it is not always clear
who are the representatives of the alternatives views. In building up an argument, of
course, one can always fight with constructed opponents if there are no real ones.
(‘Subjectivists would say X and objectivists would try to prove Y’.) In this part of the
thesis, however, at some places the author uses phrases like ‘they tend to ignore’ in case
where most probably she had to construct an opponent and should have used phrases like
‘by using such an approach we would miss..” At other places in the same chapter, the
author puts important arguments and counter-arguments in a footnote only and treats
them only passim. I am convinced that a more detailed and fair analysis of the alternative
approaches would further improve the quality of the thesis.
All in al, the thesis of Sabina Avdagic is a strong statement of a young scholar. It can be
still refined in several ways but in its present form the thesis offers a coherent analytical
framework to account for variation in labor strength that is open for scholarly discussion.
Actually, this is what one could expect from a good thesis.