DOI: 10.3886/e214181
title: Data and Code for: Leaders in Social Movements: Evidence from Unions in Myanmar

description: Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members’ views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar’s burgeoning labor movement. Union leaders are positively selected on both ability and personality traits that enable them to influence others, yet they earn lower wages. In group discussions about workers' views on an upcoming national minimum wage negotiation, randomly embedded leaders build consensus around the union’s preferred policy. In an experiment that mimics individual decision-making in a collective action set-up, leaders increase mobilization through coordination.<br>The code in this replication package cleans all data sources used in the analysis (Stata and R) and reproduces all the tables/figures provided in the paper and Supplementary Appendix. <br><br><br><br>
description: While we invited similar numbers of workers per factory, the turn-out was in part influenced by the union leaders, which raises the concern that factories with more capable union leaders may have larger sample sizes and thus receive more weight in our analysis. Thus, the dataset includes weight variables so that each factory counts equally. The probability weights are calculated as the total number of workers across factories divided by the number of workers in the specific factory. Alternative weights are explored in Appendix Section D.
description: Response Rates: In total, we invited 18 union presidents and 1 secretary (19 factories), all of whom participated. We invited 190 union line leaders (or Executive Team (ET) members) from 19 factories, and 170 participated. For workers,due to COVID-19, we covered 17 factories. We invited 1511 workers and 916 (61%) participated. Among them, we invited 936 union members of which 594 (63%) participated, and 575 non-union members of which 322 (56%) participated.<br>
description: At the time that the study was conducted, 41 garment factories had a union affiliated with the Confederation of Trade Unions in Myanmar (CTUM). We planned to include all factories sufficiently close to the survey location and with an operating union (some factories were still in the process of finalizing the establishment of the union). Our final list included 28 unions. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we had to stop our fieldwork early; 17 unions fully completed the data collection activities while additional 2 unions partially completed them.<br>Within each factory, we used a sampling protocol designed to obtain a sample that was representative of the populations of interest: union leaders (presidents and line leaders) and sewing section workers (union members and non-members). We conducted a stratified random selection of around 90 workers per factory. Within factory, we stratified by line, union membership, and skill level (for details, see Appendix Section A.1).<br><br>
description: Garment workers in factories with unions in Myanmar in 2019-2020.
description: coded on-site observation; computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); other;