Exploring the role of political power resources for union success in anti-privatization campaigns in Germany and England

Scholarship on power resources theory has often understood ‘institutional resources’ as restricted to labour market institutions, despite the concept of ‘institutions’ extending beyond the regulation of the labour market and into goods and services markets. During the pandemic, trade unions assumed such an important, extended role of co-managing functions beyond the labour market. However, under which conditions can unions effectively assume this extended role? We argue that an important condition is the existence of ‘political power resources’: political characteristics of a given field that empower unions to assume an extended role. We develop this new form of institutional power resource by examining the success of union-led, anti-privatization campaigns in German and English healthcare. In doing so, we explain why campaigns in England succeeded more than in Germany by virtue of the politics of the two countries’ healthcare systems: in England, the system’s high level of politicization prompted policymakers to follow anti-privatization campaigns and halt privatization; by contrast, in Germany, policymakers could legally circumvent anti-privatization campaigns.