Civil Society and Labour Rights Protection in Asia and the Pacific

Why do some national governments in Asia and the Pacific protect labour rights better in practice than others? This article argues that labour rights will be better protected in Asia-Pacific countries where civil society organizations participate in the government’s policy-making process more intensively. It goes beyond treating regime type in the aggregate and demonstrates that the associational dimension of regime type plays a critical role in shaping government protection of labour rights in Asia and the Pacific. Multivariate longitudinal analyses of all thirty Asia-Pacific countries from 1981 to 2011 find robust support for the theory, using new data on civil society participation, and controlling for electoral democracy, trade openness, economic development, unobserved country-level heterogeneity, and other factors.

亚洲和太平洋地区的公民社会和劳工权利保护

关键词： 劳工权利； 劳工；工人；公民社会；民主；亚洲。

为什么亚太地区有些国家政府在劳工权利保护方面的实践比其它国家要好？ 本文提出， 亚太国家中，那些公民社会组织更为深入参加政府决策过程的国家会更好地保护劳工权利。 本文超越了按照整体来对待政体类型的方法，展示出政体类型的协会维度在塑造亚太地区政府对劳工权利的保护方面起到了关键性的作用。通过利用公民社会参与的新数据，并对选举民主、贸易开放性、经济发展、未观察到的国家层级的异质性以及其它变量的控制，本研究对于亚太全部三十个国家1981-2011年间的多变量历时性分析发现有对此理论的强大支持。

Translated from English by Li Guo