You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Policy concertation - the determination of public policy by means of agreements struck between governments, employers and trade unions - continues to thrive in Western Europe despite the impact of liberalizing trends that were expected to lead to its demise. This volume brings together a team of 23 experts with the aim to undertake paired historical and political studies of policy concertation in ten West European countries, which were then subjected to systematic comparative analysis. It shows that overall the incidence of broad policy concertation in Western Europe can be explained by the changing configurations of just three variables.
Tripartism—the national-level interaction among representatives of labor, management, and government—occurs infrequently in the United States. Based on the U.S. experience, then, such interactions might seem irrelevant to economic performance and policymaking. The essays in this volume reveal the falsity of that assumption. Contributors from eight industrialized countries (Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States) examine the changing nature of labor-management relations, with a particular focus on the role of tripartism and the decentralization of collective bargaining. Although nonexistent in the United States and on the decline in Japan ...
Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.
As the influence of labor unions declines in many industrialized nations, particularly the United States, the influence of workers has decreased. Because of the need for greater involvement of workers in changing production systems, as well as frustration with existing structures of workplace regulation, the search has begun for new ways of providing a voice for workers outside the traditional collective bargaining relationship. Works councils—institutionalized bodies for representative communication between an employer and employees in a single workplace—are rare in the Anglo-American world, but are well-established in other industrialized countries. The contributors to this volume surv...
The Societies of Europe is an 8-title series of historical data handbooks and accompanying CD-ROM sets, on the development of Europe from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The series is a product of the Mannheim Centre for Social research, a body dedicated to comparative research on Europe and one of the leading social research institutes in the world. It is a collection of datasets giving a clear and systematic study of long term developments in European society. The data is presented statistically and is clearly comparative. The Societies of Europe is the most comprehensive data series available on Western European social issues. Each book is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing data ...
This short and simple introduction to European politics, which includes Western and Eastern Europe as well as Russia, demonstrates how European nations have attempted to cope with division within Europe and in international politics. Highlighting differences with U.S. politics, Slomp examines the European system from various perspectives, including geography, religion, economics, and social composition. Two separate chapters discuss relations within the European Union as well as its interaction with nations outside the group. Tables and figures provide a wealth of information on the location of minorities, the ideological spectrum, and social policies. Directed toward both an American and a ...
Publisher Description
This book explains how the success of attempts to expand the boundaries of the postwar welfare state in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom depended on organized labor's willingness to support redistribution of risk and income among different groups of workers. By illuminating and explaining differences within and between labor union movements, it traces the historical origins of 'inclusive' and 'dual' welfare systems. In doing so, the book shows that labor unions can either have a profoundly conservative impact on the welfare state or act as an impelling force for progressive welfare reform. Based on an extensive range of archive material, this book explores the institutional foundations of social solidarity.
In some western European countries trade unions and employers' organizations share responsibility with government for maintaining order and efficiency in the labour market as a matter of course. in others such a role is seen as an unacceptable interference with either the free market or the prerogatives of the state, or both. How can we explain these differences? How enduring are they? Do they matter? In the 1970s there seemed to be a growing popularity for the first approach, leading to the explosion of interest in neo-corporatism; did all that evaporate during the ostensibly neo-liberal 1980s? Colin Crouch tries to answer these questions with reference to fifteen western European nations. ...
Is the end of the nation-state approaching, now that the international economy takes less and less notice of borders between countries and the European Union has already acquired so much political power? What does national autonomy mean when governments delegate any number of powers to inter-national organizations? Internationalization leads to political change, and the position of the nation-state appears to be undergoing a radical process of erosion. The surprising conclusion of this book is that the political significance of the state will not be lost. The analyses show that both expansion and fragmentation of political power are characteristics of fundamental political change. While it is true that the state is delegating authority and that internationalization is limiting autonomy, the state is also finding new forms of cooperation and coordination, both nationally and internationally, to preserve and even to strengthen its power and autonomy. Contrary to widely held assumptions, the idea of a progressive weakening of the nationstate does not prove tenable.