Matthew Amengual

Pathways to Enforcement: Labor Inspectors Leveraging Linkages with Society in Argentina

Regulations essential for improving labor standards are often ignored to the detriment of workers. In many countries, the agencies charged with enforcement lack resources and are subject to political interference. How can inspectors in flawed bureaucracies overcome these barriers and enforce labor regulations? In this article, based on case studies of subnational variation in Argentina, the author develops a theory to explain enforcement in places with weak and politicized labor inspectorates. The framework focuses on two factors: the strength of linkages between bureaucrats and allied civil society organizations, and the level of administrative resources in the bureaucracy. Linkages facilitate routinized resource sharing and the construction of pro- enforcement coalitions, and administrative resources determine whether bureaucrats use societal resources passively or strategically. By identifying pathways to enforcement that are obscured by dominant approaches to studying labor inspection, this research opens up new possibilities for crafting strategies to improve labor standards.

Reinforcing the State

Research on global programs to regulate labor standards has emphasized interactions between transnational and state regulatory institutions. If transnational initiatives can make state institutions more relevant, they have the potential to reinforce, rather than displace, state labor regulation. Through a study of the Indonesia-based program of a leading initiative to improve working conditions in the garment industry, Better Work, this article identifies the conditions under which transnational regulations reinforce domestic ones. Drawing on two case studies comparing regulations governing fixed-term contracts and minimum wage renegotiations in four Indonesian districts, the authors find that reinforcement is likely when two conditions jointly occur: unions mobilize to activate state institutions, and transnational regulators have support to resolve ambiguities in formal rules in ways that require firms to engage with constraining institutions. The authors further test the findings through a quantitative analysis of factory participation in state-supervised wage renegotiations. The findings reveal opportunities and constraints to designing global programs that can both improve factory-level standards and support the functioning of state labor market institutions.

Pollution in the Garden of the Argentine Republic: Building State Capacity to Escape from Chaotic Regulation

Environmental regulation in middle-income and developing countries is often viewed with high degrees of pessimism. Although many countries have adopted protective laws, violations are widespread and institutions are weak. This paper analyzes the puzzle of shifting patterns of environmental regulation in Argentina, a country with widespread institutional weakness. Most regulators in Argentina take a firefighting approach, acting only when skirmishes emerge between communities and firms. Amidst regulatory chaos, improvements in the environmental performance of firms are few, and noncompliance remains the norm. However, in the province of Tucumán, the pattern of regulation shifted, and officials began to systematically enforce regulations. This paper traces shifts in patterns of enforcement back to broad pressures that provoked industry and environmentalists to support increases in the internal and external components of state regulatory capacity. The analysis uncovers political dynamics that can contribute to strengthening the institutions necessary for sustainable development.

Linkages and Labour Inspectors: Enforcement in the Garment Workshops of Buenos Aires

In the past decade, enforcement of labour regulations in the garment industry of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s Federal Capital and Autonomous City, has been erratic. During the economic boom that followed the crisis of 2001, the garment industry grew rapidly. With that expansion came an increase in the number of so-called ‘clandestine’ garment workshops, many of which exhibited extreme violations of a wide variety of labour laws. Notwithstanding a national effort to strengthen labour institutions during this period, for the first few years there was little reaction from the state to violations in the garment industry. Then, in 2006, following a tragic fire in one of the workshops, enforcement increased drastically and was sustained for nearly two years. After 2008, however, enforcement levels dropped once again, recreating conditions for the proliferation of labour law violations in the industry.