Factional Alliances, Trade Union Bargaining Power and Social Policy in Australia
Abstract
In explaining why party leaders may alter social security policy, the globalization literature highlights the limits governments face in implementing programmes supportive of social protection. This article calls for greater attention to the role of agency and political leadership in manufacturing social policy changes. Although international competition may set new and complex parameters within which party leaders interact, agency choice is crucial for explaining policy changes. The aim in this article is to introduce the strategic element to analysis of the redistributive impact of ruling parties. To this end, Australia is focused on as a case study and two factors are explored. First, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is analysed as a multidimensional variable, particularly in terms of ideological coherence, the structure of competition and party organization. The argument rests on the assumption that party leaders enjoy a degree of freedom to act according to their own criteria. Second, the evolution of the bargaining power of trade union leaders and party leaders is examined. The article indicates that discretionary changes to social policy may also be the outcome of strategic considerations.
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I thank David Farrell, Carol Johnson, Jim Jupp, Kelvin Knight, Ian McAllister, Deborah Mitchell, Marian Sawer, Diane Stone and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper.
1.
1 Weiss (1999) offers a good survey of this literature.
2.
2 On this topic, see Garrett (1998).
3.
3 For a critical review, see Mulé (1997).
4.
4 Ross (2000) advances a convincing critique of this argument.
5.
5 A more comprehensive treatment of these issues can be found in Mulé (1997, 2001). The crucial importance of intra-party dynamics for understanding the functioning of political parties has been convincingly demonstrated in Panebianco (1988).
6.
6 The question regarding the forces that triggered this realignment, interesting though it is, lies beyond the scope of this work. Some authors point to the dynamics of party competition, others to structural change in the labour market and the rapid decline in the blue-collar percentage of the workforce and the continuing increase in white-collar employment. See Jaensch (1983), Duncan (1989) and Burchell and Mathews (1991). The constraints of international economic forces may have helped the ascendancy of Labor rightwingers, but how much of this ascendancy can be traced to external pressures is difficult to quantify from the literature.
7.
7 Reason and Reform, p. 1.
8.
8 This model is a variation of Fritz Scharpf's (1997) monetarist coordination game. It differs from Sharpf's model in that the key for the bargaining outcome is the organizational decline of the trade unions. A variant of this model can be found in Mulé (2001).
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