Skip over navigation  World Politics  Vol. 64, No. 2  April 2012
Pathways of Dominance and Displacement The Varying Fates of
Legacy Unions in New Democracies  By Teri L. Caraway Legacy
unions—formerly state-backed unions that survived democratic
transitions—are one of the most persistent legacies of
authoritarian rule. While usually successful in maintaining
their preeminent position, legacy unions have in some cases been
overtaken by competing unions. Deploying a set of paired
comparisons of legacy unions that entered the transition with
similar legacies but experienced different fates—Indonesia with
South Korea and Poland with Russia—this article examines why
some legacy unions continued to dominate (Indonesia and Russia)
and others did not (South Korea and Poland). The author
identifies four pathways of change: endurance (Indonesia),
attrition (South Korea), hegemony (Russia), and rupture
(Poland). Several features of the transition context propelled
legacy unions down distinct pathways of change—the wide