Authoritarian innovations: a fresh perspective on the state's role in labour governance

Abstract

How do we understand the efforts of governments across the political spectrum to undermine trade unions in ways that do not involve overt repression? This article introduces a special issue that examines this question through the lens of authoritarian innovations, a political science concept that draws analytical attention to practices that purport to embody democratic principles but actually undermine democratic participation. As applied to the labour and industrial relations field, the concept of authoritarian innovations refers to new governance practices that appear to advance labour rights but, in fact, weaken or subvert workers’ genuine, democratic and collective participation in the workplace, in labour institutions, and in the broader polity. As this article argues, this concept allows us to move beyond broad-brush assessments of the labour governance practices associated with different kinds of political regimes to a recognition that democratic and authoritarian states alike may act in ways that appear democratic but are, in reality, quite the opposite.

Introduction

In the context of a global crisis of democracy and the emergence of new forms of despotism (cf. Keane, 2020), there is greater attention to the interaction between political change, democratic institutions and employment relations (Baccaro et al., 2019; Cornell and Barenberg, 2021; Creighton et al., 2020; Cumming et al., 2020). Industrial relations scholars have observed the relationship between unions and democracy, primarily with regard to internal democracy within unions themselves and to workers’ collective representation and advocacy for industrial democracy (Baccaro et al., 2019). Arguably, because of this focus on the push for industrial democracy, there has been less attention paid in the discipline to how the strategic use of particular governance practices can wind back or disable democratic participation in and beyond the workplace, let alone how such practices are justified and legitimated.

While the term ‘governance’ encompasses the power and potential regulatory influence of businesses, civil society organisations and even consumers on employment relations (e.g. Donaghey et al., 2014), the power of the state to govern the field is central. As Howell (2021: 740) has argued, the state has always played a critical role in ‘the regulation of class relations and the maintenance and periodic transformation of the institutions that mediate between capital and labour’. State power is exercised to support capitalist accumulation and the pacification of labour mobilisation but also to preserve the legitimacy of political and state authority (Ford and Gillan, 2016; Hyman, 2008). These intertwined, sometimes competing, objectives are reflected in meso-level labour governance. Because of the inherent tensions associated with managing labour, state authority can enable democratic practices and labour institutions or be directed towards constraining or disabling workers’ genuine collective representation and democratic participation (Lucio and MacKenzie, 2018: 164–165). Driven by the legitimacy imperative, institutional changes or governance practices may also be cloaked in the discourse of democracy and popular empowerment while actually circumscribing or controlling unions capacity to represent their members. This widespread phenomenon has also been little discussed in the field of industrial relations.

The concept of authoritarian innovations is a valuable tool for better understanding how states strategically use governance practices and institutional changes to manage dissent and control worker voice and collective representation (Ford et al., 2021). In the political science literature, authoritarian innovations are defined as ‘novel governance practices designed to shrink spaces for meaningful public participation in politics’ (Curato and Fossati, 2020: 1010). This concept is useful for industrial relations scholars because it promotes an analysis at the meso-level that allows us to ‘capture the practices that restrict political participation without specifying a priori the political regime in which they take place’ (Pepinsky, 2020: 1093). Consequently, it can be applied to different governance fields—in our case, the field of labour governance—across a range of political regimes and contexts, from established democracies, to one-party states, to hybrid regimes. Setting aside states’ overarching political complexion to focus on meso-level techniques of control in this way makes it possible to tease out and classify the intent behind them but also their impact on workers and unions. This, in turn, allows us to recognise patterns within meso-level strategies of control that intersect with, but are not determined by, regime type.

With contributions on the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Mexico, India and Myanmar, this special issue examines authoritarian innovations in labour governance across different regime types. Building on the work of Ford et al. (2021), these articles both illustrate and augment the utility of authoritarian innovations as an analytical lens for scholars of industrial relations by pushing us to consider the varied and dynamic ways in which states of all kinds use ostensibly democratic measures to control workers and unions. Important contributions in this respect include an emphasis on path dependency and its limits, the complex, often contradictory, nature of the state itself, and the multilevel character of states’ contribution to labour governance—but also their alliances with extra-state actors, including employers and even non-democratic unions. These observations and insights are consistent with the underpinning premises of the approach: authoritarian innovations at the meso-level of governance take multiple forms, emerge within but also beyond the state, and must be interpreted with reference to the social, economic and political context in which they are embedded (Curato and Fossati, 2020).

Authoritarian practices and innovations

Paying close attention to how meso-level governance practices constrain democratic space requires scholars to distinguish between the appearance and the essence of ‘reforms’ or show how subtle or gradual changes combine over time to achieve these outcomes. As Curato and Fossati explain, ‘actors pursuing autocratic agendas creatively employ various tools to debilitate democracy while maintaining or creating nominally democratic institutions’ across ‘authoritarian regimes and democracies alike’. Even governments and leaders that have been democratically elected may be ‘innovating to shrink spaces for voice and accountability’—although generally through practices that are ‘subtle and go under the radar’ (Curato and Fossati, 2020: 1007). ¹ Authoritarian innovations can, moreover, draw on a broad ‘menu’ of options for restricting democratic space, accountability and independent voice, such as regulatory changes, the strategic use of legal action, adjustments of bureaucratic procedures, public communication strategies, and many other means (Morgenbesser, 2020).

One of the distinct characteristics of authoritarian innovations is its attention to authoritarian practices emanating from the state, but also through collaborations between state and private sector actors, even with civil society. In this respect, the proponents of this approach have drawn heavily on the foundational work of Glasius (2018, 2023), who argues that the political science scholarship focuses too heavily on the classification of political regime types, dominant political leaders and the conduct and outcomes of elections, with the result that the actual actions taken to diminish democratic space may go unobserved. To correct this imbalance, Glasius has advocated for closer attention to be paid to authoritarian and illiberal practices, where illiberal practices are ‘patterned and organised infringements of individual autonomy and dignity’ (and are therefore primarily a human rights problem rather than a problem with the mechanics of democracy) while authoritarian practices are ‘patterns of action that sabotage accountability’, which threaten democratic process (2018: 517).

Further elaborating on her understanding of authoritarian practices, Glasius writes:

Authoritarian practices presuppose a downward relationship, where the actor or configuration of actors engaged in the practices has a degree of control over people, and it presupposes some form of demand for accountability. Drawing on these criteria, I define an authoritarian practice as a pattern of actions, embedded in an organized context, sabotaging accountability to people over whom a configuration of actors exerts a degree of control, or their representatives, by disabling their voice and disabling their access to information (Glasius, 2023: 22, emphasis in original). ²

The literature on authoritarian innovations extends this insight by drawing attention to the idea of innovation insofar as new authoritarian practices may be created—or existing practices reconfigured and assembled in new ways—to reduce democratic voice and accountability.

Another distinctive feature of the approach is its observation that authoritarian innovations ‘draw from democratic discourse and disguise themselves as democratic’ in ways designed to build legitimacy and neutralise opposition (Curato and Fossati, 2020: 1017). In short, a fundamental characteristic of these innovations is the fact that they cloak themselves in democratic values and institutions while at the very same time eroding voice and ultimately limiting democratic participation.

In the labour governance domain, there is a well-established discussion of the enabling conditions that support worker participation, which emphasises the crucial role of genuine and independent collective representation in the workplace and society. ³ However, just as the idea of authoritarian innovations emerges from an inversion of the established interest of political science scholars in democratic innovations (practices and reforms that deepen and sustain democracy), there is surely a need for close observations of the practices that disable and disempower worker voice, accountability and participation in and beyond the workplace. Also consistent with the attention of political science scholars to the impact of authoritarian practices on collective actors, there is a particular need to draw attention to the ways authoritarian innovations work to undermine collective worker representation, which typically takes the form of a union but includes other associational vehicles (Atzeni, 2016). Indeed, a key benefit of identifying and analysing authoritarian innovations in labour governance is that it draws our attention beyond overt displays of repressive force and towards attempts to control organised labour cloaked in claims of democratic reform.

Based on these considerations, we define authoritarian innovations in the labour and industrial relations field as new governance practices that appear to advance labour rights but, in fact, weaken or subvert genuine, democratic and collective participation in the workplace, in labour institutions, and in the broader polity. We are especially interested in understanding how policy innovations or institutional change invoke the language of ‘rights’ and even of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedoms’ to subvert genuine democratic participation in labour governance. However, it is also important to recognise that these authoritarian innovations are contested and challenged by labour movements and their allies since it is in these contestations that the underlying dynamics of industrial relations in a given country are revealed.

Why authoritarian innovations in labour governance matter

Authoritarian innovations in labour governance matter because of their increasing importance in state repertoires around the globe. At first glance, the study of them may appear to be most salient in countries ruled by authoritarian or hybrid regimes. Many such countries have at least partially transitioned from overt oppression to institutional reform as a means of exercising labour control. For example, in China, a law purporting to avert foreign influence works to prevent grassroots labour NGOs from accessing foreign funds to support their activities. As Franceschini and Nesossi (2018: 113) argue, this and other ‘sophisticated’ strategies of ‘repression and control’ have ‘far more serious consequences at both an individual and organisational level’ than ‘repression in the form of “rough” threats of violence, eviction, and criminal punishment’ (see also Howell and Pringle, 2019).

Authoritarian and hybrid regimes favour authoritarian innovations in labour governance because they allow those regimes to balance international and domestic pressures for liberalising reform with their desire to maintain control (Ford et al., 2021). As Curato and Fossati (2020: 1013) note regarding the political sphere, ‘while imprisonment was the most common practice to silence opposition leaders in the late 1970s and early 1980s, contemporary authoritarians are more likely to incapacitate opposition leaders by suing them for libel or defamation’. And because authoritarian innovations do not rely on direct forms of state coercion and violence, they can be convincingly aligned with claims to uphold democratic values, including in the field of labour governance. Indeed, for several decades, such strategies have provided international validation for states that adopt the machinery of tripartism with no intention of using that machinery to promote effective worker representation and genuine policy dialogue (Bernards, 2017; Dibben et al., 2015).

Equally, transitional and hybrid regimes have leveraged internationally sanctioned institutional arrangements to claw back power ceded during periods of political upheaval. This is no more evident than in Southeast Asia, the region in which the concept of authoritarian innovations first emerged. Over a period of three decades, the International Labour Organization worked with the governments of Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Myanmar to introduce legal frameworks that embed the principles of tripartism and social dialogue (Ford et al., 2018). In Timor-Leste, these institutions have barely been operationalised (Ford, 2016). In Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar, governments subsequently made changes to those frameworks that appeared to make them more inclusive while in fact reducing opportunities for meaningful engagement by workers.

Cambodia and Indonesia have mastered the art of authoritarian innovation. In Cambodia, the government introduced ostensibly democratic legal reforms that it claimed were designed to strengthen individual workers’ rights. In truth, these reforms reduced the space available to workers to contest company-level policies. It also made institutional refinements that opened up tripartite institutions in ways that seemed democratic (giving more unions a seat at the table) but actually reduced the influence of unions that are not aligned with the ruling party (Ford et al., 2021). In Indonesia, the authoritarian regime that held power from the mid-1960s to 1998 claimed to ‘protect’ the unions from the ‘outside influence’ of political actors while in reality shrinking the political and industrial space available to them (Ford, 2009). Even after that country democratised, successive governments responded to the growing power of organised labour by reconfiguring wage-setting mechanisms that had previously functioned as a robust bargaining arena such that they became merely rubber stamps using an ostensibly ‘fairer’ formula to determine wage rises (Caraway et al., 2019; Caraway and Ford, 2020).

Authoritarian innovations are, however, also found in liberal democracies where governments also use the language of democratic values and individual rights to justify measures to regulate and restrict access to collective industrial action (Cornell, 2021). Developments in labour governance in Trump's America led some observers to see parallels between the control and containment strategies used in the United States and those used in authoritarian polities, especially with regard to ‘constrained bargaining, significant strike impediments, extensive use of the lockout, and reducing obligations to support the designated union’ (Cornell, 2021: 61). In Australia, meanwhile, the space available to unions has shrunk, with increased controls on strikes, which remain legal but are only allowed in a narrow set of circumstances; even then ‘it is technically difficult to engage in lawful strike action and easy to get it wrong, and when lawful strike action does occur the action may be stopped’ (McCrystal, 2019: 130). In both cases, these ‘innovations’ have been justified in ways that shroud their negative impact on collective labour rights in the language of democratic practice.

In studying authoritarian innovations, it is necessary to pay attention to their architects—be they regime leaders, officials or elites—that coalesce around shared political logics and projects (Morgenbesser, 2020). As Morgenbesser (2020) also points out, it is equally important to study the form they take—be it informational, legal, political, reputational or technological; and the specific groups they target, for instance, citizens, activists, political opponents, even foreign policymakers. This approach allows us to identify specific practices that restrict democratic participation and the possibility of recognising tactical similarities at this meso-level of governance across different political contexts. To do so, however, requires a deep understanding of the historical development of employment relations institutions and actors in each context, and of how these institutions and actors have been shaped and reshaped by macro-level changes in politics.

Authoritarian innovations across regime type

The special issue begins with contexts where applying authoritarian innovations is most counter-intuitive, namely liberal democracies in the Global North. Chris Rhomberg explores authoritarian innovations in labour governance in the United States of America, which he argues is a critical, though understudied, site for incremental changes that undermine political and civic institutions, limit space for popular participation and constrain rights to free expression and dissent. In doing so, he focuses on the impact of federalism on labour and welfare governance, contrasting the New Deal order in the Northern and West Coast states and an ‘anti-New Deal’ regime, which features more restrictive labour laws and a weaker welfare state. As Rhomberg explains, the latter initially emerged in the South but has since spread to Republican-controlled states in the de-industrialised Midwest, where it reduced the scope of democratic governance of employment and diminished the capacity of working-class actors to counter rising authoritarianism in the state and society. The paper argues that the concept of authoritarian innovations assists in analysing these processes of regressive incremental and cumulative change within ‘normal’ democratic procedures.

Stijn Smismans’ paper on the United Kingdom interrogates the intersection between macro-level authoritarian innovations and meso-level authoritarian innovations—in this case, the flow-on effects of Brexit, which was framed as an exercise in reclaiming control from an undemocratic Europe—for labour governance. As Smismans notes, Brexit's proponents claimed that leaving the European Union (EU) would strengthen the welfare system and protect British jobs. In practice, however, it cleared the way for the government to implement two important authoritarian innovations in labour governance. First, it established a process for rolling back EU labour regulations without proper parliamentary oversight or broader social control. Second, it moved to reduce the capacity of workers to use strike action effectively by invoking minimum service standards and permitting companies to use agency workers to replace striking workers. Based on the British case, Smismans argues that the concept of authoritarian innovations provides a useful means of understanding diverse and sometimes contradictory practices in labour governance if it is deployed within a deeply contextualised understanding of macro-level political developments.

The contribution by Adam Mrozowicki highlights the continuing impact of Poland's neoliberal transformation on labour governance and the relationship between illusory corporatism and authoritarian innovations in labour governance. Weak tripartite institutions—which nevertheless complied with international labour standards—were introduced as part of Poland's post-Cold War transition to liberal democracy. As Mrozowicki demonstrates, these legacy institutions played an important role in the government's responses to the global financial crisis (2008–2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2023). In response to the global financial crisis, a centrist coalition of the Civic Platform and the Polish People's Party initially agreed to a package of anti-crisis reforms proposed by the social partners but subsequently abandoned the bulk of the reforms. This, in turn, led to the establishment of an informal coalition between the right-wing populist Law and Justice Party and Solidarity, one of the largest Polish unions. Mrozowicki demonstrates that the latter was, in part, path-dependent. It was also nevertheless novel insofar that populist leaders built privileged relations with its union allies and marginalised tripartite social dialogue in order to undermine worker participation. He concludes that these efforts to constrain worker representation have only been partially successful, as unions have managed to stave off a fully authoritarian turn.

The next three articles explore authoritarian innovations in labour governance in less-established democracies. Mark Anner, Matthew Fischer-Daly and Cirila Quintero examine the past and present of labour governance in Mexico through the lens of authoritarian innovations, drawing attention both to how authoritarian innovations of the past became institutionalised over time and to how attempts to reform these institutions have been mediated or thwarted by new waves of authoritarian innovation. In particular, they discuss how authoritarian innovations in labour governance became institutionalised in Mexico during the 20th century when close collusion between political parties, state officials and union elites limited the possibility of genuine worker representation and democratic participation in the workplace. As they go on to explain, incremental adjustments were made to this system before the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-oriented opposition party, MORENA, in December 2018. Obrador's government then introduced far-reaching labour reforms that claimed to empower workers and support independent unionism and worker participation. Ultimately, however, these reforms were met with a fresh wave of authoritarian innovations driven by elements within the state bureaucracy, employers and corporatist unions that have sought to defend the old system. The authors argue that these authoritarian innovations in labour governance can be linked to sub-national political dynamics with varying impacts across economic sectors. Their contribution also suggests that labour reforms and regulatory initiatives initiated ‘from above’ can have design principles and exclusions that allow actors operating ‘from below’ to limit genuine democratic worker representation.

The second of this latter set of contributions focuses on India. Drawing on three examples, Ernesto Noronha and Premilla D’Cruz demonstrate how the Modi government's pro-business initiatives have incorporated practices designed to appeal to workers and notions of popular sovereignty while actually restricting workers’ access to information and limit their capacity to engage in dissent. First, they examine the ‘Make in India’ initiative, which promised a ‘compassionate’ approach to labour issues while simultaneously dismantling inspection systems, decriminalising offences related to labour infringements and reducing compliance demands on employers. They then examine a series of laws that were promoted as simplifying industrial relations but which, in fact, rolled back labour protections and state regulatory oversight. Finally, they describe steps the government has taken to couch its labour ‘reform’ agenda in anticolonial and Hindu nationalist discourse, bypass Parliamentary oversight, and reduce the role of organised labour in policy-making forums and consultative processes while maintaining its formal commitment to tripartism. They argue that labour ‘reforms’ that, in practice, will erode working conditions, labour rights and genuine worker representation can be advanced by a ‘manufactured’ process of surface-level democratic deliberation and the intertwined power of neoliberal ideology and Hindu nationalist politics in contemporary India.

An underexplored dimension of the current literature on authoritarian innovations is the circumstances in which they may be discarded in favour of a return to direct forms of coercion and violence. This is an important part of the story in Myanmar, where a military-dominated Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) government introduced a relatively progressive labour regime after a long period in which unions were banned and no legal-institutional framework for industrial relations existed, only to again dismantle it a decade on. Michael Gillan and Michele Ford contrast labour governance in the USDP period (2011–2015) and the period in which the civilian-led National League for Democracy (NLD) government ruled Myanmar (2016–2021). The NLD's stated commitment to democracy, responsible business practices and sustainable development should have seen a consolidation of Myanmar's new industrial relations institutions. However, as Gillan and Ford demonstrate, it not only failed to address emerging problems with the country's industrial relations institutions but also presided over regressive changes in the lead-up to the 2021 coup. This, they argue, illustrates the analytical benefit of distinguishing between authoritarianism as a system of government and authoritarian innovations in a particular governance field—in this case, labour governance—that do not rely on the presence of a particular regime type.

Conclusion

As these contributions attest, the concept of authoritarian innovations is a powerful tool for understanding the nuances of state—labour relations. Its focus on the meso-level of labour governance makes it possible to identify and analyse authoritarian governance practices that are discursively framed as democratic and freedom-enhancing but, in fact, restrict genuine democratic participation in and beyond the workplace. As this introduction and the six articles that follow elucidate, a focus on the state's meso-level role makes it possible to conceive of labour governance in all regime types as a contested terrain. Importantly, this allows for the possibility that workers can act collectively to push for change not only in liberal and hybrid democracies but also in even the most authoritarian of contexts.

It has been observed that ‘at the heart of employment relations is understanding how such parties with different—sometimes competing, sometimes complementary—interests interact with each other and how wider societal context shapes this interaction’ (Wilkinson et al., 2018: 3–4). The discipline's attention to the dynamics of regulation and the employment relationship means that the state's role as an agent and author of change is often somewhat marginalised (Howell, 2021). We would further suggest that the field has tended to adopt a limited view of the role of the state—alone or working in collaboration with other actors—in constraining or enabling available democratic space in labour governance not only through policy change but also the deployment of specific practices and discourses. Attention to novel changes at the meso-level that limit workers’ democratic participation in society and in the workplace—namely, authoritarian innovations in labour governance—offers one pathway towards this broader view.