Trade Unions and Popular Representation: Nigeria and South Africa Compared

Abstract

Scholars (primarily, but not only, from Europe) are naturally enough preoccupied with the historical role of labour movements and their ability to sustain their political influence on state power through the close link between unions and the political wing of the movement, whether social- democratic, socialist, or communist. Are working-class-based and trade- union-backed political parties the solution to the ‘democratic problem’ in much of the world today? Some of us feel that we have good reasons to think so. The notion of a labour movement seems to break out of the straitjacket imposed by those who want us to choose between parliaments and civil society. By allowing itself to be located at the very centre of the political society, it dissolves the state-society division that has been popularised by liberal and neo-liberal theory.