Journal ArticleDOI
Trade Unions and National Wages Policies
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, the relation between working-class political and industrial power and the feasibility of a national wage policy is examined in 13 Western democracies and two conditions for the acceptance of such a policy are identified: first, the working class must be sufficiently united politically to elect a Socialist government that will administer the wages policy in such a way that workers or at least their leaders in the trade unions are convinced that the policy is not simply a way of depressing their incomes relative to those of the rest of the population.Abstract:
U sing data relating to 13 Western democracies,' this paper deals with the relation between working-class political and industrial power and the feasibility of a national wages policy. A wages policy is only feasible in a democracy if it is accepted by tradeunion leaders on behalf of the workers whom it directly affects. For this acceptance to be forthcoming we hypothesize that two conditions must be fulfilled. First, the working class must be sufficiently united politically to elect a Socialist government that will administer the wages policy in such a way that workers, or at least their leaders in the trade unions, are convinced that the policy is not simply a way of depressing their incomes relative to those of the rest of the population. Second, the workers must be sufficiently united to form a strong centralized union movement that can help administer the policy without imposing excessive strain on the cohesion and loyalty of its own organization. It is hoped that this study will be of interest from several perspectives. From the perspective of political development theory, it will be useful to observe how some very powerful interest groups will, under certain circumstances, decide that the public interest requires self-restraint of them in the pursuit of their own sectional interests. Thus the trade unions, having attained a fairly dominant position in several political systems, have proved willing to accept the principle of wage restraint embodied in a national wages policy. The implications of this development will be more fully discussed in the concluding section of the paper. It is clearly of great importance, however, that the "sub-system autonomy" enjoyed by interest groups in the Western democracies should not lead to the unbridled exercise of power by organized business andread more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis*
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the causes and consequences of the expansion of the public economy following Schumpeter's discussion of the tax state, in terms of the extractive role of government and found that some nations have experienced a far greater rate of increase in recent years and, as a result, have a much larger public economy than other nations.
Journal ArticleDOI
States and Social Policies
Theda Skocpol,Edwin Amenta +1 more
TL;DR: For instance, this paper explored the alternative ways in which democratic political processes have helped to create programs and expand social expenditures in industrial capitalist democracies, focusing on two dozen or fewer industrialcapitalist democracies.
Book ChapterDOI
Concertation and the Structure of Corporatist Networks
TL;DR: In terms of what they do, rather than what they say about it, and even more markedly in terms of the pattern of their behaviour over a period of years, the similarities are striking as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Unions, Employers' Associations, and Wage-Setting Institutions in Northern and Central Europe, 1950–1992
TL;DR: The eight countries examined in this study, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, have long been viewed as exemplifying "corporatist" industrial relations as discussed by the authors.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory
TL;DR: The case studies of the policy-making process constitute one of the more important methods of political science analysis as discussed by the authors, and they have varied in subject-matter and format, in scope and rigor, but they form a distinguishable body of literature which continues to grow year by year.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Analysis of Public Policies in Cities
TL;DR: The authors pointed out that these studies are argumentative and sometimes rhetorical, using data to score policy points rather than scientific ones, and argued that such studies are "value-laden" and lacking in scientific interest.
Related Papers (5)
Wage determination: the changing role of institutions in advanced industrialized countries
Mixed Signals: Central Bank Independence, Coordinated Wage Bargaining, and European Monetary Union
Peter A. Hall,Robert J. Franzese +1 more