The politics of productivity and the politics of anti-communism: American and European labour in the Cold War

The ‘politics of productivity’, an attempt to raise levels of industrial productivity in Europe by transcending class conflict and creating a consensus in society for economic growth, was a prominent element in Marshall Plan thinking. It constituted a central focus of the European Recovery Program's labour programme administered by American trade union officials who staffed the Marshall Plan's Labor Division. This programme was initially supported by the American Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), until hostility to collective bargaining in the local business community, combined with the unwillingness of senior Marshall Plan administrators to insist on collective bargaining as the price of receiving American assistance, blighted the project. This contribution contrasts the CIO's initial support for the productivity programme with the American Federation of Labour's (AFL) more direct strategy of combating communism at the level of organization and propaganda. It concludes by describing how the competing claims of these two American labour organizations for US government funding became a significant factor in American labour's conduct of Cold War politics.     

The politics of unemployment: Rates of unemployment and labour market policy

This article analyses the claims advanced by Robert McKenzie about the distribution of power in British political parties. It considers McKenzie's mode of analysis (with particular reference to Labour), his definition of terms, selection of evidence and interpretation of it. The major argument is that McKenzie over‐generalised from the events of the 1950s and 1960s and that subsequent events have severely undermined his thesis.     

Under pressure. Economic constraints,electoral politics and labour market reforms in Southern Europe in the decade of the Great Recession

Even when subject to comparable exogenous constraints during the Eurozone crisis and in its immediate aftermath, governments in Southern Europe have pursued distinct labour market reform agendas. What room for manoeuvre did governments of crisis-struck peripheral countries really have in shaping their labour market reform strategies, and how can we account for the observed variation? We address these questions by making a twofold contribution to the debate on the political economy of austerity in the Eurozone periphery. First, through the first systematic analysis of all labour market and collective bargaining (CB) reforms implemented in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece over 2009–2019, we identify those elements of core labour market deregulation common across Southern European countries (namely, the loosening of employment protection for workers on open-ended contracts and the decentralisation of CB to the firm level); and those elements of variation, both cross-country and cross-party, in the content of corollary labour market interventions that accompanied this core deregulation. Second, we explain these similarities and variations in reform outcomes as the product of the interaction of two factors: economic constraints and electoral dynamics. We argue that the implementation of the common core of deregulation is linked to the exogenous pressure to improve export competitiveness to which Southern European countries have been subjected since the crisis. Through the combination of survey data analysis and qualitative evidence, we then show empirically how the variation in the corollary measures accompanying deregulation is linked to the class composition of the electoral social blocs Southern European partisan governments rely on or aim to assemble. Based on this analysis, we identify four ideal-typical labour market reformist strategies attempted by Southern European governments during the decade of the Great Recession. The analysis highlights that although domestic politics plays a crucial role in shaping structural adjustment under crisis conditions, not all reform strategies are equally viable within the framework of Economic and Monetary Union.     

Random errors, dirty information, and politics

Rational voters' assessments of candidates and policy proposals are unbiased, but affected by random errors. "Clean" information decreases these errors, while "dirty" information increases them. In politics, most voting procedures weigh random individual errors asymmetrically. Thus, such errors do not counterbalance one another in the aggregate. They systematically affect politics. This illuminates the roles of political propaganda and interest groups. It helps to explain various puzzles in Public Choice, e.g., the frequent use of inefficient policy instruments. Institutional conditions are identified that shape the aggregate impact of individual errors and the politicians' incentives to produce dirty information.     

The courts,politics, and the ACLU

She is co-director of the Arthur Garfield Civil Liberties Program where she teaches and writes in the areas of family law, constutional law, and health law.     

Disinterest,disaffection, and participation in presidential politics

Undue emphasis on the decline of voter turnout in national elections and its interpretation as indicative of political malaise are likely to make for erroneous understanding of the American democracy. Evidence from studies of the national electorate conducted between 1952 and 1978 shows that the explanation for declining turnout is not to be found in commensurate diminution in political interest or involvement, or in a decreasing sense of civic duty, feeling of political efficacy or trust in government. Where patterns of change have coincided, further analysis indicates an absence of possible cause-and-effect relationships. The decline has been chiefly limited to those population sectors characterized by lack of interest or involvement in national partisan politics. The article concludes with a projection of likely developments in political participation, including turnout, in future presidential elections.An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Conference on National Elections 1980: Continuity and Change in American Politics, Washington University, St. Louis, May 1980.     

Economic liberalisation,market institutions and labour rights

What effect do pro‐market economic policies have on labour rights? Despite significant debate in policy and academic circles about the consequences of economic liberalisation, little is known about the labour rights effects of pro‐market policies. Extant literature has focused only on the possible outcomes of market‐liberalising policies, such as trade and investment flows, rather than directly assessing market‐friendly policies and institutions. Moreover, this line of research has found mixed results on how these outcomes influence labour conditions. To provide a comprehensive assessment of this linkage, this article combines data on five distinct policy areas associated with economic liberalisation with data on labour rights for the period 1981–2012. The results indicate that pro‐market policies – except the ones involving rule of law and secure property rights – undermine labour rights. Thus while there are some positive economic and political outcomes associated with market‐supporting policies, economic liberalisation comes at the cost of respect for labour rights.