This book explains the contrasting strategies of social democratic parties and their electoral fortunes in the major European democracies in the 1970s and 1980s. Going beyond approaches that focus on the influence of class structures and political economic institutions, Herbert Kitschelt analyzes a party's competitive situation in the electoral arena, the constraints and opportunities of party organization, and ideological legacies to explain the strategic choices made by social democratic parties and their electoral results. Social democracy is far from being doomed to decline, but its...

This book argues that European economies were not deregulated in the 1980s. While old, politically-centralized institutions have lost importance, institutional arrangements continue to shape economic behavior of peripheral actors. The book's importance lies not just in showing that the prevailing deregulation view is wrong as far as continental European countries are concerned, but especially in outlining an alternative pattern of "micro-social" regulation of their economies.

This book presents empirical research on the nature and structure of political violence. While most studies of social movements focus on single-nation studies, Donatella della Porta uses a comparative research design to analyze movements in two countries--Italy and Germany--from the 1960s to the 1990s. Through extensive use of official documents and in-depth interviews, della Porta is able to explain the actors' construction of external political reality, and to build a theory on political violence that synthesizes the various interactions among political actors.

A comparative investigation of how unions and firms interact when economic circumstances demand substantial job loss. Using simple game theory to generate testable propositions about when these situations will result in industrial conflict, the work illustrates the theory in a range of situations between 1950 and 1985 in Japan, Italy, and Britain. Additionally, the author shows how the theory explains why strikes over job loss almost never occur in postwar unionized firms in the United States.

Between States is a two-part study compiled in one book. It is the first book to assess systematically the broad implications of interim governments in the establishment of democratic regimes and on the existence of states. Drawing on historical and contemporary democratization experiences, Shain and Linz, the principal authors, explore four ideal types of interim government: opposition-led provisional governments, power-sharing interim governments, incumbent-led caretaker governments, and international interim government by the United Nations. In the second part of this book, other...

The United States, Germany, and Japan, the world's three most powerful and successful free market societies, differ strikingly in how their governments relate to their economies. Comparing Policy Networks reports the results of collaborative research by three teams investigating the social organization and policymaking processes of national labor policy domains in the United States, Germany, and Japan during the 1980s. Through interviews with more than 350 key labor policy organizations in all three countries, the authors reveal similar conflict divisions between business and labor interests...

The laws that legislatures adopt provide a crucial opportunity for elected politicians to define public policy. But the ways politicians use laws to shape policy vary considerably across polities. In some cases, legislatures adopt detailed and specific laws in an effort to micromanage policymaking processes. In others, they adopt general and vague laws that leave the executive and bureaucrats substantial discretion to fill in the policy details. What explains these differences across political systems, and how do they matter? The authors address these issues by developing and testing a...

Recasting labor studies in a long-term and global framework, the book draws on a major new database on world labor unrest to show how local labor movements have been related to world-scale political, economic, and social processes since the late nineteenth century. Through an in-depth empirical analysis of select global industries, the book demonstrates how the main locations of labor unrest have shifted from country to country together with shifts in the geographical location of production. It shows how the main sites of labor unrest have shifted over time together with the rise or decline...

This book examines the degree to which international financial markets affect governments' policy choices. It provides empirical evidence as to whether financial globalization creates pressures on governments of developed and developing nations to pursue similar policies and to reduce spending on social policies. The book suggests that financial globalization does not lead to a "race to the bottom" among governments, especially in developed nations. It deploys several types of evidence; the most unique are interviews and surveys of investment fund managers. It also compares contemporary...

When and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers for various employment-related risks? What factors explain the variation in the social policy preferences of employers? This book provides a systematic evaluation of the role played by business in the development of the modern welfare state. Isabela Mares studies these critical questions and demonstrates that major social policies were adopted by cross-class alliances comprising labor-based organizations and key sectors of the business community.