Industrial Democracy Research Articles

Legislative policy-making authority, party system size, and party system nationalization

How does the internal organization of legislatures shape the legislative party system? We argue that the size and nationalization of the national legislative party system is related to the size of the legislative prize—namely, to how the legislature's internal rules and structures concentrate policy-making authority in the hands of the largest party. To test this argument, we draw on studies of legislative organization to develop a measure of the concentration of legislative policy-making authority. Using two time series cross sectional data sets of post-war elections, one of advanced industrial democracies with pure parliamentary systems and one of all advanced industrial democracies, we find support for our argument and note that the effect of internal legislative structures is larger than that of the electoral system. We also show that the incentives to aggregate and consolidate the legislative party system are generally stronger where there are few external constraints on the legislature.

Trust deficit: Japanese communities and the challenge of rebuilding Tohoku

Trust between civil society and the state is a necessary pre-condition for successful public policy in advanced industrial democracies. It is all the more important following a mass catastrophe that affects hundreds of thousands and upends the rhythms of daily life across the country. Choices made by the Japanese government and energy utilities during and after the compounded 11 March 2011 disasters damaged relationships between civil society, utility firms, and the government. This article looks at how decision makers in Japan continue to struggle with a trust deficit and how that gap has altered the behavior of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society as a whole. Residents will continue to resist what they see as flawed disaster recovery and nuclear restart processes unless the political system undergoes major reform.

Challenging the age of austerity: Disruptive agency after the global economic crisis

This article explores the different forms of disruptive subjectivity that have developed in the context of the post-2008 global and European crises. The article traces developments both before and after 2008, with a specific focus on events in Spain and the UK. These country contexts are chosen due to their considerable differences in terms of the impact that the crisis had; yet we witness notable similarities with regard to the instances of refusal and resistance observed, especially in terms of the motives held and forms adopted, albeit with differences in scale. The paper presents the results of qualitative research, including 65 in-depth interviews, to highlight the way in which disaffection, the search for voice, and the threat of withdrawal from relations of exploitation have each become problematic as means of dissent following 2008. As a result, we have seen a merging of these more conventional forms of dissent with a number of more radical prefigurative practices that had been developing prior to 2008. As a result, the stagnation of neoliberal capitalism from 2008 onwards has witnessed the development of a new form of pragmatically prefigurative disruptive subjectivity, responsible for some of the more important and interesting political developments in contemporary advanced industrial democracies.

Youth Engagement and the Colbert Nation: From Passive Consumer to Passively-Active Viewer

The youth of today have been cast in a state of temporality, with no way of knowing whether their condition is permanent or transitionary. Today’s youth are regarded as a low priority by politicians, and scholars and policymakers often view this dis- connection as a crisis in citizenship within advanced industrial democracies. is disengagement from electoral politics has contributed to several underlying issues, such as, a feeling of alienation from the political process, and a growing disinterest toward the political system. However, young people are now engaging in non- electoral forms of civic and political engagement, such as, participatory culture, which facilitates space for political and civic youth mobilization, and this, in turn, promotes democratic values of involvement.This paper examines the institutionalization of political media satire, with a speci c focus on the commodi cation of the content found on The Colbert Report. I will explore the role of institutionalized political satire within hegemonic institutions, and argue that TCR creates a viewership based on the fetishism of commodities. However, where fetishism often generates passive reception, I argue that the com- modi cation of political content and TCR fandom culture generates a passively- active viewer, and facilitates a space for youth engagement. For reasons discussed, it remains an open question whether young people will take full advantage of the political knowledge and awareness gained from watching TCR, and whether this will lead to future political advocacy. Keywords: Colbert Report, civic engagement, political media e ects, political satire, political participation, youth participation.

Gendered political resources

Party office is a crucial political resource for those seeking a political career. It provides advantageous access to the distribution of the patronage parties are entitled to in party government democracies. This article aims at measuring this comparative advantage while simultaneously investigating whether it benefits women and men equally in political recruitment processes. We concentrate on viable candidacy for parliamentary office, ministerial appointments, as well as post-ministerial offices in public and semi-public life that are also in the hands of political parties to distribute. Our cross-national analysis of advanced industrial democracies shows that men are much more likely than women to benefit from holding party office in their ascendant political careers, even when controlling for other political resources, sociodemographic factors and country-level variables. This suggests that party office is a gendered political resource and that gender power dynamics are deeply entrenched in political parties.

The Rise of Special Operations Forces: Generalized Specialization, Boundary Spanning and Military Autonomy

ABSTRACTThe special operations forces (SOF) of the industrial democracies have suddenly and rapidly grown in numbers and resources during the past decades. Most explanations for this growth focus on factors external to the armed forces. We argue that the enlargement of SOF is also the result of internal organizational dynamics. First, we compare SOF to other units and military appendages that have grown over the past 30 years in order to delineate what is unique to their development and the special adaptive potential they bring to the armed forces: generalized specialization, boundary spanning roles, and enlargement of military autonomy. Second, we analyze the actions of internal military entrepreneurs and their organizational mentors to show how they use this adaptive potential to “sell” the use of SOF to key policy-makers and decision-makers.

Experiments in industrial democracy: an historical assessment of the Leicestershire boot and shoe co-operative co-partnership movement

State-socialist academics have been highly sceptical of worker co-operatives. Following the Webbs’ classic studies, they assume that capitalist market competition renders them either inefficient or undemocratic. The experience of the British co-operative co-partnership (COCP) movement, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, suggests a more optimistic reading, with implications for future alternative forms of work organization. COCP worker co-operatives were long-lived and participative, while advancing other social goals, such as good wages and working conditions, union membership and better housing. This article introduces the theory of COCP, stressing the stakeholder model and the predominance of employee representatives. Next, I establish Leicestershire as a major regional centre for both shoemaking and COCP, linked to the wider institutions of consumer co-operation. Six co-operatives are discussed: three Leicester city societies, Equity, Anchor and Self-Help; and three village societies, Barwell Sperope, Glenfield Progress and Sileby Excelsior. The article concludes that footwear COCP was a relatively successful small-scale endeavour, not subject to the fatal contradictions predicted by the Webbs. The movement died out because the bureaucratic ‘spirit of the age’ in the British co-operative and wider labour movement, turned against these initiatives from below, which therefore failed to rejuvenate.

In the Gap the State Left: Policy Feedback, Collective Behavior, and Political Participation in Zambia

In advanced industrial democracies, evidence suggests a positive relationship between inclusive public policy, collective behavior, and political participation. Yet Africa, which generally exhibits high levels of collective behavior, often has exclusionary policies and variable rates of political participation. Using Afrobarometer data and qualitative case analysis in Zambia, this paper argues that the links between collective behavior and political participation differ in African countries due to lower government capacity and weaker structures of accountability linking politicians to policy outcomes. Employing a policy feedback framework, it demonstrates that the policy context in which collective behavior emerges determines the extent to which it influences political participation. Specifically, low levels of service provision generate higher levels of collective behavior, indicating that communities organize in response to need. The extent to which this collective behavior results in political participation, however, depends in part on citizens’ political efficacy.

Better than Nothing: How Policies Influence Political Participation in Low‐Capacity Democracies

A growing body of policy feedback work demonstrates that citizens' experiences with public policy influence the way they participate in politics. Most of this work takes place in advanced industrial democracies, but the nuances of policy design influencing participation in advanced democracies are often irrelevant for those in low‐capacity democracies. This study extends the policy feedback framework to address how policies might “feed back” differently in low‐capacity countries with uneven basic service delivery. In low‐capacity democracies, the most salient distinction is between those who have access to basic state‐provided services and those who do not. Using original data collected in Zambia, it demonstrates that those who have even marginal access to state services have higher levels of political engagement and political participation than those without access, indicating that imperfect extension of services may help boost democratic citizenship in developing countries.

Winner-Take-All Politics in Europe? European Inequality in Comparative Perspective

In this introduction to the special issue “The New Politics of Inequality in Europe,” recent literature on income inequality in the advanced democracies is summarized. It is argued that dominant accounts are too heavily focused on the United States, whereas the experience of Western European countries has been neglected. Although income inequality has risen nearly everywhere in the rich industrial democracies since the end of the 1970s, it has done so from different starting points, at different rates, and for reasons connected to different mechanisms and different parts of the distribution. Extending the analysis to Western Europe enables us to understand these variations more fully.

Well-Being and the Democratic State: How the Public Sector Promotes Human Happiness

While a growing literature within the study of subjective well-being demonstrates the impact of socio-political factors on subjective well-being, scholars have conspicuously failed to consider the role of the size and scope of government as determinants of well-being. In this study, we examine the size of the public sector as a determinant of cross-national variation in life satisfaction across the industrial democracies. At the individual-level, we find that public employees are happier and exhibit greater life satisfaction than otherwise similar others. At the aggregate level, the data strongly suggest that the subjective well-being varies positively with the size of the public sector. The implications for the study of life satisfaction are discussed.

Cross-National Gender Gaps in Political Knowledge

Although the majority of studies on political knowledge document lingering gender-based differences in advanced industrial democracies, most contributors have drawn such conclusions from a single or a handful of countries, using limited batteries of political information items. Exploiting a pooled data set of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems encompassing 106 post-election surveys in forty-seven countries between 1996 and 2011, this article demonstrates that survey instrument–related factors, such as question format and content, as well as the overall difficulty of questions, are more consequential in shaping the size of gender gaps in political knowledge than institutional factors, such as electoral rules or opportunity structures. The research design of this article draws from almost three hundred different items measuring factual political knowledge using the broadest country coverage and most comprehensive approach to measurement to date.

Keynesian Eugenics and the Goodness of the World

AbstractThis article shows how John Maynard Keynes's lifelong commitment to eugenics was deeply embedded in his political, economic, and philosophical work. At the turn of the century, eugenics seemed poised to grant industrial nations unprecedented control over their own future, but that potential depended on contested understandings of the biological mechanisms of inheritance. Early in his career, Keynes helped William Bateson, Britain's chief proponent of Mendelian genetics, analyze problems in human heredity. Simultaneously, Keynes publicly opposed the efforts by Francis Galton and Karl Pearson to study inheritance through statistical biometry. For Keynes, this conflict was morally laden: Mendelism incorporated the only ethical theory of uncertainty, while biometry rested on false and dangerous concepts. This early study of heredity shaped Keynes's visions of industrial democracy after 1918. Liberals looked for a system of societal and economic management to engineer an escape from the postwar Malthusian trap. Britain's economic plight, Keynes argued, was rooted in the hereditary weaknesses of its leadership. Successful technocratic liberalism would depend on control over the quality as well as quantity of human beings. Ultimately, in his essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” Keynes predicted that effective eugenic management would bring about capitalism's end.

Inequality, Corruption and Democracy in Industrial Democracies

Several OECD democracies face serious challenges to the health of their systems of representational government and accountability because of a combination of factors: high and growing inequalities in income and wealth, the ability of elites corruptly to exert undue influence that undermines democratic processes and skews public policy in their favour, and the increasing alienation of a significant class of citizens who feel politically disenfranchised and economically marginalized. The paper examines the links between income inequality, political inequality, corruption and democracy in this group of countries, with a particular focus on the situation in two major democracies – the US and UK. It presents evidence that corruption is an important factor, among others, that may be exacerbating the adverse impact of economic and political inequality on democracy by weakening the accountability and legitimacy of democratic institutions. In 26 of the 34 OECD countries, political parties are seen by the public as a corrupt institution. While there is a danger of exaggerating the role of corruption in undermining democracy, there is equally a danger of ignoring or minimising the role of corruption, both in diagnoses of, and the formulation of policy responses to, the problems of political and economic inequality. There is a risk of pursuing commendable agendas for reducing economic and political inequality while ignoring an issue that is serious enough to derail those agendas. Curbing the role of money in politics should be a key element of an anti-inequality agenda.

Partisan Politics and Stock Market Capitalization

당파성 정치에 대한 전통적인 연구들은 노동 친화적인 좌파정당이 투자자들의 투자 의욕을 저해한다고 가정한다. 반면 근래의 연구들은 좌파정당 또한 노동자 복지증진을 위해서 고용을 늘려야 하므로 노동친화적인 정부가 투자를 촉진시킨다고 보았다. 본 연구는 집권당의 당파성이 주식시장에 미치는 영향은 경제 상황에 따라 조건부로 나타난다고 주장한다. 1988년부터 2007년까지 선진 산업국가의 주식시장 데이터를 활용하여 경험적으로 검증한 결과 실물투자가 부진할 경우 좌파정당이 우파정당에 비해 투자를 촉진시키지만 실물투자가 활발한 경우는 좌-우파 정당의 차이가 사라지는 것으로 나타났다.

A syndicalist moment? Democracy, insurgent unionism, and the ‘Outlaw Strike’ of 1920

This article considers World War I era labor insurgency through an examination of the 1920 ‘outlaw’ switchmen’s strike, one of the largest rank-and-file revolts of the postwar strike wave. Drawing upon Bureau of Investigation surveillance reports, the article argues the strike represented not so much an expression of a ‘syndicalist impulse’ as a struggle over the definition of the new unionism and the ideological legacy of the war. Inspired by the wartime rhetoric of Americanism and industrial democracy, pressed by the rising cost of living, and frustrated with the failure of the state and their parent unions to deliver living wages, the insurgents briefly succeeded in building democratic, cross-craft unions. The rebel unionists failed, but the ‘Outlaw Strike’ arguably was as important as the later and larger 1922 national shopmen’s strike in the way it highlighted issues of wages, union democracy, and employee representation.

A Man for All Seasons: Monroe Sweetland and the Liberal Paradox. By William G. Robbins.

A Man for All Seasons: Monroe Sweetland and the Liberal Paradox . By William G. Robbins. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2015. xii + 300 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $24.95, paper.) Professor William G. Robbins has written a well-documented biography of Monroe Sweetland, whose public life illustrates how a gadfly with a commitment to social justice navigated the tumultuous mid-twentieth century. Born in 1910 in Salem, Oregon, where his father was both a young medical doctor and a football coach at Willamette University, Sweetland grew up in small-town locales in Oregon and Michigan. Family connections led him to law school at Cornell University in the depression-ravaged 1930s, where he was drawn to the activism of Norman Thomas and the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), whose focus on racial justice permanently affected him. Robbins draws on Sweetland’s private papers … bill_toll{at}yahoo.com

“And You Know Who I Am”: Paul Robeson Sings America

“And You Know Who I Am”:Paul Robeson Sings America Shana L. Redmond (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution It’s an iconic image of an iconic man: Paul Robeson standing amongst the workers at the Moore Shipyard in Oakland, California, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The year is 1942, the midpoint of World War II, a time when national loyalty oaths were used to isolate and dismiss Communist Party members or sympathizers, to maintain industry function during the war effort, and to discipline the increasingly strike-ready (and interracial) union workers. The oath was but one strategy to enforce unity during the Popular Front, which, according to Michael Denning, was composed of “not simply New Deal Liberalism and populism. It was a social democratic culture, a culture of ‘industrial democracy’ and ‘industrial unionism’ ” (The Cultural Front xvii). An advocate of organized [End Page 615] labor and internationally renowned artist of stage and screen, Robeson was poised to document that moment with his incredible voice. Yet he did so most definitively, not with the national anthem, but with “Ballad for Americans,” a dynamic song that, with its first performance on November 5, 1939, had announced the dawn of U.S. involvement in World War II. Robeson was in perfect form that day, commanding a chorus on CBS radio, to whom he sang as they also sang to him, punctuating his narrative history of the nation. From the battle for U.S. independence to the industrial age that formed them as a class, the song demonstrated the innovations of the people who make up the nation. This hallmark moment in the development of the Popular Front was also a defining moment in Robeson’s career; he continued to sing “Ballad for Americans” for years after, with students at summer camps and union choruses on major stages. Yet “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of his native land, was not a noticeable part of his catalogue or performance career. These two songs in juxtaposition tell us something of Robeson’s distinctive relationship to and pride in his citizenship and suggests the reasons why we continue to struggle over the national anthem as representative of a nation still at war. Identity is at the core of each of these songs but in strikingly different ways. As All Things Considered host Robert Siegel puts it, “Ballad for Americans” is an “operatic folk cantata”; it contains moments of detailed recitative that provide depth in a song that otherwise labors for historical comprehension. The song dramatically slows at the entrance of Robeson’s repeated line, “And you know who I am,” which over the course of the ten-minute song is questioned regularly by the chorus (“No. Who are you, mister?”). In response, Robeson proudly announces that he is the “nobody who’s everybody”: the mechanics, musicians, teachers, and farmers whose belief in the nation is informed by their identities as Negro, Russian, Czech (and double Czech) as well as Jewish, Methodist, and atheist. This diversity of perspectives is not a liability in “Ballad”; it is instead the exceptional contribution and wealth of this nation’s citizens, suggesting that the work of the nation is ongoing, but more perfect with each new arrival. Such dynamism and flexibility is absent in the U.S. national anthem, which is charged with cohering a nation not in the making but already made. The photograph of Robeson singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with the Oakland workers (the “nobodies”) just a couple of years after his performance of “Ballad” is, in some respects, a perfect portrait of his relationship to that song—an anthem which is today (thanks to NFL [End Page 616] quarterback Colin Kaepernick and numerous other athletes) open for interrogation in dramatic and increasingly public ways. The stark simplicity of the black-and-white image in Oakland is a freeze-frame without sound; though his mouth is poised with verse, the luscious voice that marked Robeson’s career is absent. We do not know what Robeson sounded like singing the U.S. anthem; he never recorded it nor was he filmed singing it. For a man whose studied repertoire is marked by the inclusion...

Statehood, Power, and the New Face of Consent

Individuals and groups are often subjected to power, both public and private, by eliciting their consent. Debate usually focuses on whether or not that consent is freely given or is vitiated by imbalances of strength between the bargaining parties. This essay focuses on a different issue, one that is largely passed over in legal and moral analyses: how far does and should consent bind one to accepting in advance changes in the future? There are signs of a fundamental shift in answering this question—a shift that particularly concerns the control of power in the economy. Industrial democracies may be abandoning a conception of consent rooted in the model of the social contract. They may be moving toward a conception that requires the consenting parties to take on risks about the future that are more thoroughgoing and potentially damaging than would be allowed under the earlier model. Examples of this phenomenon will be drawn primarily from two domains in which issues of consent to economic power are central: employment law and international investment law. The evolution of legal principles of consent at work here will be critically evaluated with the help of the tools of political theory. It is an analysis that deliberately selects examples in order to illustrate positions rather than to provide an exhaustive account of the prevalence in different countries and sectors of the problems highlighted. The latter is a task for follow-up empirical investigation.

The Driving Forces of Diffusion in John R. Commons’ Institutional Economics

In this article, I reconstruct John R. Commons’ theory of institutional evolution: I draw a trajectory from where a novel principle at the micro level reached a compromise with old principles at the macro level. In the process, the uniqueness of Commons’ evolutionary theory is highlighted and a forgotten challenge for modern evolutionary and institutional economics is uncovered: the need to explore the spiritual driving forces in history in a specific time and space. In drawing the trajectory in Commons’ centerpiece work Institutional Economics (IE), the following two points are highlighted. First, “institutions” themselves (defined as “going concerns” where the collective action controls member actions), carry novel principles and evolve through their diffusion process. The novel principles discussed here are industrial democracy and safety. Second, the spiritual driving force unique to the era pushed ahead the evolution and diffusion of the institution. This force is similar to a religious devotion to industrial democracy and safety. In order to confirm these “genuine” unique aspects, I compare Commons’ theory with French modern institutionalism and with modern evolutionary economics reconsidering old institutionalism.