The Post‐Crisis Legacy Effects of Union Legitimacy in Liberal Market Economies
基于对澳大利亚、爱尔兰和英国35位精英的访谈，研究解释了新冠危机期间中右翼政府为何与工会合作保护工人，以及危机后工会政策影响力差异的原因，强调历史遗留合法性的作用。
ABSTRACT This article uses theories of legitimacy to explain, first, why centre‐right governments in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom collaborated with trade unions to develop worker‐protective policy mechanisms during the COVID crisis and, second, variation in the post‐COVID influence of unions over the policy agendas of these governments. Drawing on an analysis of 35 elite interviews, it argues that unions in all three countries were able to achieve policy influence during COVID because their legitimacy increased in a crisis context. However, the extent to which union influence over neoliberal governments was sustained post‐COVID varied, with weak influence in the United Kingdom, moderate influence in Australia and stronger influence in Ireland. The findings highlight the importance of residual forms of legitimacy derived from previous episodes in explaining this variation and the circumstances in which actor legitimacy changes over time, thus adding a temporal dimension to industrial relations theories of legitimacy.