Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

这篇博士论文调查了工会是否有助于或阻碍经济发展。由于工会通过创造或破坏社会稳定来影响发展，因此了解南亚工会采取的抗议策略及其原因至关重要。许多学者没有沿着这些思路进行研究，而是依赖于由发达工业国家的经验支持的论点。这种做法导致在这个问题上缺乏证据，也缺乏适合南亚情况的理论。首席研究员将通过1991-2000年期间对南亚六个城市（加尔各答、科钦、科伦坡、马德拉斯、孟买和德里）劳工抗议的政治经济学研究，努力克服这一问题。本研究在理论和实证两方面促进了对南亚工会行为的理解。首先，它采用了基于网络的工会行为理论，该理论认为工会策略的不同取决于工会与雇主和国家机构的正式联系程度。拥有更多联系的工会抗议较少，并且使用常规的抗议策略。没有联系的工会会更多地进行抗议，他们会使用以下两种方式中的一种：极端暴力行为或苏格兰式的“弱者武器”。这种替代性抗议策略的增加扰乱了经济发展。检验这一理论的证据将来自a)对工会领导人、政府官员和管理人员的数百次采访，b)对印度和斯里兰卡媒体报道的数千起抗议事件的描述，以及c)对雇主和投资者的两项调查。用普通最小二乘横截面回归模型检验工会网络联系与罢工策略之间的关系。在这些模型中，罢工抗议的策略和数量将是因变量，而与政党和工会的联系将是主要的自变量。将通过各种方法评估抗议策略对经济绩效的影响。这些将包括：1)对印度私营部门公司代表的调查；2)对在印度的外国投资者的调查；3)与印度雇主的面试；4)企业层面的缺勤率和生产率统计模型。

This Doctoral Dissertation investigates whether trade unions help or hinder economic development. Because unions affect development by creating or disrupting social stability, it is crucial to know what protest strategies unions in South Asia pursue and why they pursue them. Instead of conducting research along these lines, many scholars have relied on arguments supported by the experience of advanced industrial states. This practice has led to a lack of evidence on the subject and a paucity of theory appropriate to the South Asian context. The Principal Investigator will work to overcome this problem through an examination of the political economy of labor protest in six cities in South Asia (Calcutta, Cochin, Colombo, Madras, Bombay, and Delhi) during the period 1991-2000. This study advances the understanding of union behavior in South Asia on both theoretical and empirical fronts. First, it employs a network-based theory of union behavior, which holds that union strategies differ based on a union's degree of formalized connections to employers and institutions of the state. Unions with more ties protest less, and use routine strategies of protest. Unions without ties protest more, utilizing one of two alternatives: extreme acts of violence or Scottian "weapons of the weak." This higher volume of alternative protest strategies disrupts economic development. Evidence to test the theory will come from a) hundreds of interviews with union leaders, government officials, and managers, b) descriptions of thousands of protest events as reported in the Indian and Sri Lankan press and c) two surveys of employers and investors. The relationship between the network ties of unions and the strike tactics they pursue will be tested with Ordinary Least Squares cross-sectional regression models. In these models, measures of strategies and volume of strike protest will be the dependent variables and measures of ties to parties and unions will be the primary independent variables of interest. The impact of protest strategies on economic performance will be assessed through a variety of methods. These will include: 1) a survey of representatives of private sector firms in India; 2) a survey of foreign investors in India; 3) interviews with employers in India; and 4) firm-level statistical models of absenteeism and productivity.