Book Review of Jens Arnholtz and Bjarke Refslund (eds) (2024) Workers, Power and Society. Power Resource Theory in Contemporary Capitalism. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

The publication of this book, aimed at scholars of union action, has been welcomed by researchers.It is a compelling effort to synthesise and advance recent debates, promising to be a source of inspiration and reference for researchers in the field for years to come.We first discuss some of the book's merits; second, we make some comments on the paths for future debate and scholarship that it begins to open up.The book is organised into two sections.The first establishes the foundation of union power resource theory (PRT), with one chapter dedicated to a general exposition and the remaining chapters to each type of power.The second section presents its empirical application by analysing unions and conflicts in different countries.First, it is interesting to highlight what this new version of PRT adds compared to previous analyses.As labour revitalisation studies (LRS) shows, union strategies in neoliberal societies have expanded to revitalise themselves.German researchers have proposed two types of power to capture this phenomenon: institutional power and social power (Schmalz and Drre, 2014).As Dorigatti (2024) and Brookes (2024) have already pointed out, the book operationalises five types of power -structural, institutional, associative, coalitional, and ideational -that provide analytical and methodological tools for study at the macro and meso levels.A specific contribution of this book is a greater sophistication in its rationale for defining each type of power and the discussion of its application in different sectors.Furthermore, this PRT, drawing on the work of Lukes ( 2005), presents a broader conception of power, emphasising aspects related to both power within the organisation (power to) and power seen in relation to other actors (power over), as well as the struggle of ideas.This entails thematising power as something observable in both manifest and unmanifest conflicts as well as in collective bargaining in the workplace, tripartite negotiating tables, and discursive struggles.This approach holds promise for improving our understanding of the agency and power of marginalised groups -such as immigrants, precarious workers, young people, and women.To illustrate the contribution of this book, we make three comments on the paths ahead.A first comment concerns the changes in relation to LRS.While LRS distinguishes between revitalisation strategies as causes and increased power as effects, in PRT, strategies are subsumed within types of power.This eliminates the need for a more micro-scale analysis of unions that implement strategies but are unsuccessful, for whatever reason, in increasing their power; PRT shifts the analysis to a more abstract level.Furthermore, as Brookes (2024) points out, there is a risk of a circular explanation; we recommend differentiating between types of power -and their respective indicators -to analyse the success or failure of union struggles.That is, a union can