Ashley Anderson

In the United States and in Europe, labor unions have historically been associated with a strengthening of the middle class and the transition to democracy. It came as little surprise, then, that in the wake of the Arab Spring that shook the Middle East in 2011, labor unions came forward in countries like Tunisia to support the democratic agitators. More surprising, though, was the fact that in other countries, like Morocco, they did not.

According to Ashley Anderson, PhD candidate in government, labor unions’ differing response to increasing autocracy in the Middle East has everything to do with their historic roots vis-à-vis the government. Where labor unions have developed in a way that enmeshes them in government structures, they are more likely to mirror the power structures of that government and are less likely to resist its less-than-democratic changes. Anderson argues that such is the case for Morocco, while in Tunisia the opposite is true.

Anderson’s work enhances our understanding of the ways that even seemingly democratic organizations can become co-opted by authoritarian governments. “We have to look more carefully at the ways that autocrats perpetuate themselves,” Anderson explains. While it’s commonplace to think of autocratic power in the form of overt oppression or even outright economic incentives to quiet would-be opponents, Anderson says that the reality is more complicated. “Regimes perpetuate themselves in other, more subtle ways. They quiet people by including them, so while these regimes might look democratic on the outside, in reality that isn’t always the case.”