Konkordanz gleich Konvergenz? Die Links–rechts–Positionierung der Schweizer Bundesratsparteien, 1947 – 1995

Mit einer Inhaltsanalyse der Wahlprogramme der letzten 50 Jahre lassen sich die Schweizer Bundesratsparteien auf einer Links-rechts-Skala positionieren und erstmals vergleichend analysieren. Eine erste deskriptive Auswertung geht der Frage nach, ob die Institutionalisierung des Konkordanzsystems mit der Zauberformel 1959 eine konvergente Entwicklung im Sinne einer Annäherung der Parteipositionen von FDP, CVP, SVP und SPS auf der Links-rechts-Dimension nach sich zog. Nach Einführung der Zauberformel 1959 zeigt sich zwar eine längere Phase der Konvergenz, in der sich die rechts positionierten Parteien FDP, CVP und SVP gemeinsam in die Mitte bewegen; die SPS bleibt klar links verortet. Die erhöhte Polarisierung in den 1980er und anfangs der 1990er Jahre spricht allerdings gegen einen nivellierenden Effekt der stabilen Vier-Parteien-Koalition. Vielmehr entwickelt sich ein dreipoliges System, dessen rechter Pol 1995 verstärkt wird. Nach der Institutionalisierung des Konkordanzsystems lassen sich demnach nur phasenweise konvergierende Parteipositionen nachzeichnen.     

Renationalization in Argentina, 2005–2013

Since 2002, government nationalizations and contractual breaches in general around the world have surged. South America has witnessed a wave of nationalizations of private enterprises, mostly foreign. Some analysts contend that this trend is shaped by the left‐wing ideological orientation of the governments, whereas others argue that a more robust explanation is the combination of economic pressure and constraint factors. This article contributes to the debate by using a nuanced institutional analytical framework based on the concept of company versus government opportunism, applied to the recent nationalization of previously privatized companies. It examines Argentina, a country that in the last two decades has seen radical policy reversals, from sweeping privatization of state‐owned enterprises in the 1990s to a renationalization effort with some of the same companies in the early 2000s.     

Labor and the Living Wage 1890–1910

It is clear that the Australian labour movement did not subscribe to any identifiable political ideology, did not blue-print a grand master-plan, the application of which eventuated in the complex arrangements of industrial control and the establishment of the national minimum wage. More in character would be the proposition that labour deployed its scarce resources at the points most likely to yield the greatest short-term rewards. It was logical, for instance, given enhanced political power, to concentrate effort on raising wages and improving conditions in government employment; but equally the campaign was an expedient devised to remedy obvious malpractices of sub-contractors. Labour's policies may be thought of more as a series of short-term expediences evolved as experience taught, rather than a continuum of inter-related policies being part of a preconceived plan of action. Economic and political conditions mostly dictated the pace and direction of change: labour mostly capitalized on opportunities as they occurred. In the process, however, the Australian labour movement inadvertently helped to carve out for itself, and for Australia, the most complete system of state regulated industrial control outside the present day socialist countries. It became socially acceptable for governments to set standards of work, to specify and enforce a pattern of social conditions matching the rigours of an abstract concept of social justice. In the name of settling industrial disputes pacifically, governments assumed the role, or were given the task, of enforcing a wage structure which assumed a parity of power between the two sides of industry, and particularly postulated a ‘living wage’ based at least ostensibly on a criterion of social welfare as distinct from one of industrial capacity. Ultimately, it is with the latter consideration we are most concerned, for the ‘living wage’ formed the conceptial basis of the Harvester judgment and the national minimum wage. The tactics employed by the labour movement to raise wages required continual harping on the standard of living; the iniquity of a wages system tolerating a level of income for the unskilled which a consensus of opinion owned to be socially undesirable. Though labour's indignation of a bricklayer's getting 8 shillings a day when he ‘rightfully’ deserved 10 shillings was of measure equal to that of labourers' receiving less than a subsistence wage, public concern was the greater for ‘a man, wife and three children’ living on 30 shillings a week. Moreover, whilst in the 1900s tradesmen generally regained union rates, oversupply in the labour market kept those of the unskilled at a markedly and obviously lower level than in the decades of prosperity. Labour's policy as we have seen, operated to involve governments directly in redressing power relativities in industrial affairs, and to the fashioning of institutions through which government authority could function. Of equal importance was the cumulative product of campaigns conducted to make these institutions social, political and legal realities. The mechanism developed to meet such needs is interesting and merits careful exposition: but more interesting possibly is the impact of publicity in conditioning society to approve state action guaranteeing a minimum wage for every Australian. We cannot here attempt to analyze the cause or direction of shifts in public sentiment. We need to note, nonetheless, that labour's policies served to focus the spotlight of public concern on a set of ‘injustice’ which few could avoid recognizing. Labour spelled out the premises and little effort on the part of the general public was needed to draw logical conclusions. For more than a decade and a half, with but one brief respite, Australia experienced conditions of high unemployment. And for more than a decade and a half there occurred an unbroken series of ‘monster demonstrations’, protest meetings, well-publicized deputations to governments, rallies of the unemployed, ‘revelations' at industrial arbitration hearings, exposés by the Anti-Sweating League, social-welfare orientated parliamentary debates—the whole drawing attention to and eliciting sympathy for ’the unskilled labourer‘. Understandably the Bulletinconcluded: ’The public has had “living wage” so much dinned into its ear that it has come to regard a bare “living wage” as the proper wage for a working man to get.‘⁴³ If we couple this public acceptance of society's obligation to guarantee the working man a ‘living wage’ with the imperative that government ought to ensure industrial tranquillity, judgment when he did, where he did and why it was received with so little disapprobation.     

Argentine–Chilean Relations in the Shadow of the Debt Crisis

In the history of the relations between Argentina and Chile, the period between 1984 and 1989 is arguably the most interesting and the least studied. In Argentina, the civilian government of Alfonsín faced, on the other side of the Andes, the military regime of Pinochet. While the two countries were affected by the Debt Crisis and timidly cooperated on it, the two presidents never met. And if Chilean exiles in Argentina played a major role in the Chilean transition to democracy, Chilean rebels caused troubles in Argentina's civil–military relations. New sources have been uncovered and this article provides a broad reading of this complex period.     

Economics before politics– a colonial phantasy

I shall now try to recapitulate the argument of the paper and to draw a conclusion from it. The early pages gave evidence that, although the Australian government during the 1960s took the initiative in setting up the constitutional framework for a democratic polity, on the whole they assigned primacy, especially in the second half of the period, to policies of economic development. Without entering into the merits or successes of those policies themselves, I attributed the basic order of priorities to a mixture of motives and assumptions. The first assumption was that Australia's colonial responsibility and her commitment to heavily subsidised economic development required restraints on political development, and hence the prolongation of colonial dependence. The conflict between this assumption and Australia's trusteeship obligations could be rationalised by the notion of cautious ‘preparation’ of the people for self-determination, under Australian official guidance, and with the bait of continued Australian aid. This rationalisation seemed to be supported by a ‘vulgar’ Marxian belief in the primacy of economic activity and the secondary importance of political and other social functions. However, it was also hoped that economic change need have no awkward political repercussions. To sustain that hope, it was further assumed that while the colonial regime lasted, the government of Papua and New Guinea could be treated as essentially an administrative task, untrammelled by the claims of autonomous political ideologies and interests. If the policy makers for Papua and New Guinea held such a set of assumptions, consciously or otherwise, it would go far to explain some of the leading features of the country's governmental history in recent years: the strength of its economic planning machinery and the lack of sophistication in its administrative and political dealings; the relatively perfunctory efforts at political ‘preparation’; the attempts to keep local government and the public service ‘non-political’ and to contain incipient politics in the House of Assembly; the paternalistic controls over members of formal government institutions; above all, the failure to maintain meaningful communication with the groups of people most profoundly affected by the incidence of economic development itself. For experience had falsified the basic assumptions of policy, so far as they accord a primary role to economics, relied on a comfortable continuance of the colonial relationship, and conceived government mainly in terms of administration. Politics the demand for the reconciliation of conflicting interests by autonomous negotiation—had erupted in local government, in the House of Assembly, in political associations, and in the villages. I t had erupted in spite of the assumptions of the regime—and also because of them, for the more rigidly such beliefs are practised, the more violent is the reaction likely to be. The conclusion, then, is that politics is independent of economics, and interdependent with it. In the government of Papua and New Guinea, as of any such country, political skills are as important as economic planning if economic growth is to be matched by political stability.