(Page 2 of 25) - Bargaining for Democracy: Labor Unions and Democratic Consolidation in Spain authored by Royo, Sebastian.

Introduction

This paper examines not only the effects of labor strategies over the democratization process, the key focus
of the literature, but also the consequences of democratization and political changes on labor strategies. It
analyzes the strategic choices of the working class movement during the democratic transition and
consolidation process in Spain. While the literature on democratic transitions has demonstrated the
essential role of labor mobilization on the strategies of the incumbents during regime transformations in
Western Europe and South America (i.e. Collier 1999), it does not explain convincingly the behavior of the
unions themselves during the transition and first years of democracy. Both aspects are deeply connected.
How do we account for the unions' behavior? Why did some unions within countries pursue more moderate
strategies than in others? Why did unions' strategies change over the regime transition process? Why did
unions in different countries pursue more moderate strategies than in others? Why didn't Spanish unions
pursue more radical strategies and did not seek to transform the economic structures of these countries?
How do state capacities shape the strategies and behavior of the actors? While institutions constrain, they
do not determine behavior. This has to be explained.

One of the key features that marked the strategies of Spanish labor peak organizations during the

democratic transition was their decision to participate in a social concertation process. Social concertation,
defined as a mode of policy making based on the institutionalization of consultation and cooperation on
macroeconomic, labor, and social policies involving representatives from organized labor, capital, and the
state, has received substantive attention from the democratization literature. While some scholars view
these processes as beneficial mechanisms that contribute to resolve socioeconomic conflicts during
democratic transitions (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Lange 1987), others consider them facilitating
instruments in the implementation of economic liberalization that accompanies the process of political
opening (Bermeo 1994; Bresser Pereira, Maravall, and Prezeworski 1992), and contribute to governability
(Cameron 1984, Schmitter 1981). However, the question remains, What are the institutional mechanisms
and political factors that make possible the development of social concertation and facilitate the success of
these processes?

Some scholars have contended that Spanish labor‘s mobilizational restraint and its decision to

participate in the development of social pacts were the result of labor leaders’ belief in the legitimacy of the
democratic state, as well as the desire among many labor leaders (both above and within the firm level) to
contribute to democratic consolidation via moderation and social concertation (Fishman 1990). Others have
claimed that these developments were the consequence of the Spanish state capacity to restrain unions
(Durán 2000). Encarnación (1997) has argued that state structures and institutional legacies may have
helped to overcome the absence of the presupposed necessary institutional preconditions developed by the
literature for the emergence and consolidation of social concertation. According to him long traditions of
authoritarian corporatist bargaining provided the Spanish government with the institutional mechanisms,
ideology, and practices to mediate conflict and give legitimacy to the process of economic adjustment and
reform. In this paper I want to build upon these contributions. I hypothesize that the political and
institutional relationship of the main labor unions with the political parties of the left conditioned the
strategies of labor during the democratization and consolidation processes and, thus facilitated the
emergence of social concertation. In a context of economic uncertainty partisan loyalties influenced the
unions’ decision to restrain their militancy and negotiate social pacts. Labor moderation, in turn, facilitated
the consolidation of the new democratic regime. A key conclusion is that that both macro-level strategies
and local level realities influenced the overall pattern of conflict.

Certainly, I am not the first to suggest the importance of the party-union relationship in policy-making

processes in Spain. However, treatment of this variable in the study of social concertation in Spain has been
inconsistent. The focus of the democratization literature on institutional (Cameron 1984, Lange 1987) and
state-centered variables (Encarnación 1997, and Schmitter 1985) has left the party-union relationship as a
residual variable in the development of concertation. Yet, these analyses tell us little about the factors that
induce the social partners to review their positions and strategies vis-à-vis existing arrangements.

Author’s Note: I wish to thank Nancy Bermeo, Ken Dubin, Omar Encarnación, Robert Fishman, Kerstin Hamman,
and Paul Heywood for helpful commentary on earlier versions of this article. Interviews with representatives from
government, business, and labor were conducted in Spain in 1996-97, 2000-01, and 2003.