This chapter analyzes the historical legacies of union-founding to establish whether these legacies had enduring consequences for subsequent patterns of teacher mobilization. It examines the development trajectories of teacher organizations, from 1900 to 1979. It analyzes several themes: church–state conflict over mass public schooling in the early twentieth century; contrasts between the political incorporation of industrial workers and teachers; patronage politics in public schools and the education bureaucracy; teacher struggles for labor codes and professional autonomy; and restrictions on political rights under nondemocratic regimes. It is shown that corporatist legacies set unions on different paths, but these legacies do not fully account for contemporary patterns of teacher mobilization.

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on labor politics, social movements, and political parties, and locates the main argument in this literature. It operationalizes the two organizational traits, hierarchical relations and factionalism, to show how they produce three strategies. It concludes by laying out the research methods used to carry out the analysis and reach these conclusions.

This chapter analyzes the organizational prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism, by charting changes in the organizational structure of the National Educational Workers Union (SNTE) of Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. It examines the threats to the corporatist model posed by the dissident movement and the regime response to help the union leadership regain control. President Carlos Salinas sheltered the union from the potentially disruptive effects of education decentralization policies and strengthened SNTE with policies to improve teacher pay. These concessions shaped the union’s internal organization, providing the resources Elba Esther Gordillo needed to build a dominant faction. The consolidation of power in the national union leadership was crucial for the strategy of instrumentalism.

This chapter shows how the bottom-up organization of CTERA was crucial for movementism. The mark of the activist base on protests is reflected in the fact that protests were organized primarily at the provincial and municipal levels, were widespread across provinces, and recurred over time. The chapter then examines the union’s role in electoral politics. While some union leaders became politicians, the union was not beholden to any political party and it lacked a coherent partisan identity. The last section analyzes the policy dynamics that ensued from movementism and the extent to which the creation of a new national institution of collective bargaining for teachers transformed the union’s political repertoire. It is shown that movementism remained largely in place.

This chapter considers insights from the argument that extend to a broader set of cases, given the global scope of teacher mobilization. It analyzes the shadow cases of teachers in Chile (leftism), Peru (movementism), and Indonesia (instrumentalism) to again demonstrate the crucial importance of union organizations. Finally, it considers avenues for future research on education policymaking, interest representation, and labor politics. A more comparative approach to the study of education is needed in political science to illuminate the different dynamics unfolding in public school systems in countries around the world.

This chapter analyzes the evolution of the Federation of Colombian Educators (FECODE) in the 1980s and 1990s, to show how and why factionalism took hold. It first examines the Pedagogical Movement of the 1980s, a teaching-oriented social movement that reveals a fundamental split between the radical and moderate lefts. This movement sheds light on why the union was initially included in policy negotiations. It then examines broader changes in teacher–state relations that culminated in FECODE’s role in negotiating an education decentralization package that strengthened the national executive committee. The last section analyzes how the political opening contributed to more hierarchical relations and deepening political divisions.

This chapter shows how a hierarchical organization and a dominant faction were crucial prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism. The union’s hierarchical structure enabled it to mobilize teachers in elections and a dominant faction enabled negotiations with political parties from across the ideological spectrum. The last section analyzes the political backlash against instrumentalism in 2013, which resulted in leadership turnover and policy changes that weakened the union overall. Despite this backlash, however, the union’s internal organization remained largely intact and union leaders continue to be ideologically flexible, in line with the main argument in this book.

This chapter provides an overview of the book. It presents the outcome of interest: the political strategies of teachers or the different ways that teachers mobilize in politics. These strategies are referred to as instrumentalism (strategic alliances), movementism (recurrent protests), and leftism (alliances with left parties). The chapter explains the significance of these strategies in relation to the labor movement and education politics, and it introduces the main argument. This chapter shows that examining the ways in which teachers mobilize in politics helps to shed light on normative questions about how they shape education policy and democratic governance.

This chapter shows how factional divisions in FECODE shaped electoral mobilization and ideological rigidity. It links the repertoire of leftism to competition among rival factions in internal union elections. Contrary to the Argentine tendency toward ongoing and disruptive protests, protests by FECODE were easier for the government to manage owing to the political priorities of union factions. The next section shows how factionalism and ideological rigidity produced rival negotiating strategies that limited the influence of union leaders on the policy process. The final section shows that leftism remained the central tendency of political mobilization for the union throughout the 2010s.

This chapter argues that the organizational structure of the Argentine teachers’ confederation (CTERA), with power rooted in provincial and municipal actors, is crucial for explaining why teachers engaged in ongoing protests. It examines the process of union rebuilding in the wake of democratization, after harsh repression during the military regime. Even if newly elected leaders offered little support to the union because of the debt crisis, union leaders made some progress in consolidating CTERA through their own initiatives. The chapter then turns to decentralization under President Carlos Menem as a point of inflection. This undermined national union leaders, weakening their hold on the base. Once organizational hierarchies were weakened, movementism became the union’s political strategy.