Over the last three decades, during a period of deep and far-reaching change, European trade unions have lost both regulatory power and membership. Nevertheless, though their strength may have been impaired, trade unions continue to fulfil their customary roles. This is because the legitimacy of European trade unions as social actors is both rooted in history and consolidated in institutions. In this article we argue that the crisis of trade unionism is not one of external legitimacy but rather the loss of internal legitimacy. An understanding of this phenomenon requires close consideration of the nature of representation itself, and of the way in which the relationship between representatives and those they represent is continually constructed and reconstructed. The hypothesis developed in this article is that the construction of relations of representation — a matter to which studies of trade union systems frequently pay scant attention — is fundamental to trade union legitimacy. Union actors’ understanding of and action on their own representative capacity is therefore decisive for their transformation in a globalized world.
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