Union-party alliances in the era of market regulation: The case of South Africa

Analyses of the alliance between the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) have been preoccupied with debating the desirability or otherwise of this alliance. Even those that have acknowledged stresses in the alliance because of neo-liberal policies of the ANC government have failed to account for the general fragility of union-party alliances in the contemporary world. This article begins by acknowledging that union-party relations are affected by political transitions such as those in developing countries, including South Africa's more recent one. The article then takes the debate further by providing a framework for understanding the nature of these alliances in a liberalising world. It argues that a critical shortcoming of existing analyses is their failure to locate union-party alliances in the context of a transition from 'social regulation' to 'market regulation'. The article uses the alliance between COSATU and the ANC to illustrate this argument. For COSATU the shift from social regulation to market regulation presents itself as a 'paradox of victory'. This means that while the federation was a central actor in the struggle for political democracy, it is now increasingly finding itself relegated to a marginal role. The article concludes by arguing that the advent of market regulation results in the 'withering away' of existing union-party alliances.