British Trade Unions and European Union Integration in the 1990s: Politics versus Political Economy

This article evaluates the changing assessments within the British trade union movement of the efficacy of European Union integration from the viewpoint of labour interests. It argues that there has been a marked further 'Europeanisation' of British trade unionism during the 1990s, consolidating an on-going process which previous research shows began in earnest in the mid 1980s. A shift in trade union economic policy assessments has seen the decisive abandonment of the previously dominant 'naive' or national Keynesianism. While there remain important differences in economic perspective between unions, these are not such as would create significant divisions over the question of European integration per se , the net benefits of which are now generally, though perhaps not universally, accepted. The absence of fundamental divisions is evident from a careful assessment of the debates about economic and monetary union at TUC Congress. The Europeanisation of British trade unionism needs to be seen within the context of an emergent regionalism, in Europe and elsewhere. It can best be understood as a rational response by an important corporate actor (albeit one whose national influence has been considerably diminished in recent decades) to globalisation and a significantly changing political economy environment.     

The transformation of cleavage politics The 1997 Stein Rokkan lecture

Abstract. In this lecture I discuss the development of the social divisions in Western Europe and their translation into politics. I successively take up the three aspects embraced by the notion of 'cleavages'— their structural base, the political values of the groups involved, and their political articulation. My main argument is that the decline of traditional cleavages does not necessarily signify the end of structuration of politics by social divisions. There is ample empirical evidence for the existence of a new social division between two segments of the new middle class, which has important consequences for politics. This new social division is shown to be closely linked to the new 'value cleavage' although it is not able to fully account for the enormous political implications which contrasting value–orientations have today. Finally, I suggest that the political articulation of both the transformed class structure and the new configuration of values is strongly shaped by the political legacy of traditional cleavages.     

Latino politics—class struggles: Reflections on the future of Latino politics

Abstract

This paper is a set of reflections about the future of Latino politics in the United States. All politics built around an identity presuppose the reality of that identity. In this paper, I examine the structural and ideological barriers to Latino identity formation and the structural commonalities that shape the experiences conducive to Latino identity formation. After I outline the major divisions in the “Hispanic"/Latino population, I present a theoretical analysis of identity formation and the functions of identity politics, theorizing the ways in which the characteristics of this population foster or hinder the development of Latino identity. The main argument of this paper is that preferences for and debates about ethnic labels/identities and ethnic claims often mask class divisions and class‐based grievances within this population, and that recognition of the relationship between class location, identity formation and identity politics might be a necessary step for the development of successful Latino workers’ politics.     

Aleksandr Bogdanov and Systems Theory

The significance and potential of systems theory and complexity theory are best appreciated through an understanding of their origins. Arguably, their originator was the Russian philosopher and revolutionary, Aleksandr Bogdanov. Bogdanov anticipated later developments of systems theory and complexity theory in his efforts to lay the foundations for a new, post-capitalist culture and science. This science would overcome the division between the natural and the human sciences and enable workers to organise themselves and their productive activity. It would be central to the culture of a society in which class and gender divisions have been transcended. At the same time it would free people from the deformed thinking of class societies, enabling them to appreciate both the limitations and the significance of their environments and other forms of life. In this paper it is argued that whatever Bogdanov's limitations, such a science is still required if we are to create a society free of class divisions, and that it is in this light that developments in systems theory and complexity theory should be judged.     

Public–Private Partnerships: Organisational Hybrids as Channels for Local Mobilisation and Participation?1

The article focuses on new forms of governance involving partnerships between public and private actors. As several scholars have noticed, organisational hybrids at the intersection of the public and private sectors play an important part in the implementation of collective action. Local economic development in particular has provided a fertile ground for building coalitions across traditional divisions, and encouraging partnerships. This applies to Norway as well as to other liberal Western democracies.
Obviously, the formation of partnerships reflects efforts to design more efficient and flexible instruments for founding new firms and for supporting local entrepreneurs. The article, however, raises the question of whether these arrangements may entail a far more expanded role and domain, opening up new channels for participation and mobilisation. By expanding their agenda and integrating new segments of the local community, public–private partnerships appear to be an innovation in local democracy.
Analytically, the article utilises elements of regime theory. Although the partnerships studied hardly constitute stable coalitions dominating local politics, they nevertheless illustrate how the building of coalitions including both private and public actors is crucial to coping with the problems and challenges of local restructuring and revitalisation. Case studies carried out in Norwegian municipalities provide the main empirical source. The article does, however, build on experience from other European countries.     

Why Right‐Leaning Populism has Grown in the Most Advanced Liberal Democracies of Europe

Immigration and new class divisions, combined with a growing anti‐elitism and political correctness, are often used as explanations for the strong gains for right‐leaning populist parties in national elections across Europe in recent years. But contrary to what we might assume, such parties have been very successful in the most developed and comprehensive welfare states, in nations—such as the Nordic countries—with the best scores on economic equality and social inclusion and long established political and judicial institutions enjoying a high degree of popular legitimacy. As argued in this article, this seems to happen because a duopoly of the centre‐left and centre‐right political establishment has kept issues such as immigration and new class divisions off the public agenda and hence paved the way for right‐leaning ‘disruptor’ populist parties with an anti‐immigration agenda in times of increasing immigration.     

Rock The Vote: popular culture and politics

Rock the Vote was founded in 1996 as an attempt to exploit popular culture to boost political participation. Using pop musicians and comedians, it attempted to encourage young people to take part in politics. This article examines the formation of Rock the Vote, and explores its implications for the character of contemporary politics. It argues that Rock the Vote has to be understood not only as part of a larger shift in the nature of political campaigning and communication, but also as a response to the mutual needs of political parties and the popular culture industry. Rock the vote is both a symptom of new forms of campaigning and also a pragmatic solution to particular political problems.     

Economic Democracy: The Left's Big Idea for the Twenty-First Century?

While the notion that parts of the economy should be subject to democratic oversight is not particularly new, it is only recently that the term “economic democracy” has begun to emerge as a political label and a political project in its own right. Interest in economic democracy is at a historical high as more and more people search for a comprehensive alternative to neoliberal capitalism that is neither state socialism nor social democracy. In addition, the fact that mainstream concern with economic inequality is at a historical peak means that economic arrangements are on the political agenda in a way that they have not been for many years. The central argument of this article is that economic democracy has the potential to be the “big idea” of the left this century for two main reasons. First, although economic democracy is usually thought to be concerned solely with workplaces, in fact it has implications far beyond this. Indeed, economic democracy is best understood as a comprehensive critique of the economy and a corresponding encompassing vision of an alternative. This article thus aims to offer a sympathetic overview of the main facets of economic democracy—the attempt to democratize workplaces, finance, investment, and the market system—as a holistic and integrative project. Second, economic democracy offers an important method for challenging inequality. The expansion of democratic accountability through representation, and particularly the expansion of opportunity for direct participation in economic decision-making is a fundamentally important method of redressing the structural inequality that continues to be a defining dilemma of our societies.     

In search of a leftist democratic imaginary: what can theories of populism tell us?

It might seem that Herbert Marcuse was right: leftist politics can no longer avoid the challenge of devising its own positive normative grounds. The neoliberal political rationality that is now hegemonic must be taken on by a new imaginary: radical, leftist and democratic. This article explores what major theories about new populism have to offer to a radical leftist attempt to reinvent itself. The regeneration of populist movements across the globe appears to offer signposts to guide a new radical politics. Yet I argue that populism is no ideologically empty mobilizing strategy able to be harnessed to all manner of political purposes. Embedded in its demagogic form are key presumptions about the character of democratic justification that collude with a neoliberal political project. Theories of new populism help us to shed light, instead, on the challenges that face the Left in its own self-reconstitution amidst liberal democratic crisis. Circumspection concerning the ideological load that is carried by a populist rendering of democratic politics needs to be united with an insight into how the rise of populism itself issues a warning about aspects of a social democratic past that cannot be reclaimed unchanged.     

Analytical and Essential Marxism

Analytical Marxism involves the attempt to reconstruct Marxist theory and to refocus Marxist politics in the light of contemporary intellectual developments – especially in analytical philosophy and economic theory—and historical events – above all, the failures of Communist regimes. In order to assess this reconstruction it is necessary to bear in mind a conception of the overall Marxist project. By this standard of comparison it remains to be seen whether Analytical Marxism can effect the required kind of connection between its theory and its practice.     

Class,Race Issues,and Declining White Support for the Democratic Party in the South

The Democratic Party in the South has experienced a major loss of white voters in recent decades. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain this change. The dominant explanation in recent years has been that race issues have driven whites from the Democratic Party in the South. In this view, defections from the Democratic Party have occurred because whites oppose the party's positions on race issues. In contrast, others have suggested that class divisions have emerged as important, with affluent whites increasingly supportive of the Republican Party because they find its positions more compatible with their interests. Using NES data, this article assesses the evidence for these hypotheses, examining the impact of income position and race issues on partisan behavior since 1952. While both factors affect partisan support, income has come to have a relatively greater effect on partisan support than race issues. The evidence clearly indicates that class divisions in the South have steadily increased and that affluent whites have steadily shifted to the Republican Party. The implications are significant for understanding the dramatic changes in the South in recent decades. Much has been made of the tensions over race issues, and the findings presented here lend further support to the importance of race issues in southern electoral politics. However, these findings also suggest that class divisions are a steadily increasing source of political cleavage in this region. The current state of electoral politics in the South cannot be properly understood unless both of these factors are taken into account.     

The Left's New Urbanism

The idea of suburbia, or the suburban, or the suburbs, can imply a number of different things. Suburbia suggests a physical place, in general the outskirts of a city or large town; suburban can infer a certain lifestyle; and the idea of the suburbs is often used to identify a community or class of people who inhabit a specific territory. In politics, these terms can also retain various meanings in terms of geography, culture or community. Alongside the ideas of the urban or the rural, they are often used to debate questions of political strategy and shifting electoral coalitions. In this article, ideas of urban and suburban places, cultures and communities are used to consider wider debate regarding future coalitions and strategy within the modern left, specifically a renewed urban politics that can be identified. This new ‘urbanism’ suggests a geographical realignment—partly on cultural or lifestyle grounds—which is significant within an overall attempt to redefine the ‘base’ of the left in terms of class and community. This article considers these issues with reference to what historically has been described as the ‘Progressive Dilemma’.     

Is gender on the 'new agenda'?

Abstract. This paper examines the politicization of gender inequality through a cross-national analysis of attitudes towards inequality between men and women. The data were obtained from national surveys in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Australia and Italy. In all of these countries, attitudes towards gender inequality were found to be associated with the 'left-right' cleavage over economic inequality and redistribution, but they were unrelated to 'new politics' issues. It was also found that attitudes towards gender inequality were more closely integrated into the left-right cleavage in those countries where there was greater awareness of gender issues, and that they had very little net impact on partisanship. Thus high levels of awareness of gender inequality are not associated with the emergence of a new cross-cutting political cleavage. It is concluded that inequality of opportunity between men and women does not constitute part of a new politics agenda, nor does it cross-cut other sources of political interests. It is more plausibly seen as a new element of the well-established left-right cleavage. Consequently, it leaves the structure of political divisions relatively intact.     

后现代主义身份政治的衰颓与新民粹主义的崛起

20世纪70、80年代,资本主义进入一个相对稳定的发展时期,大规模阶级斗争相对缓和,新自由主义乘势崛起。作为新自由主义主流运动的补充,后现代主义身份政治发展起来。后现代主义身份政治从经济决定论转向文化和意识形态决定论,从大规模集体行动的逻辑转向分散的斗争。美国金融危机以来,大规模社会运动复兴,经济议题回到政治运动的中心,后现代主义身份政治的文化和自我意识革命逐步衰颓,新民粹主义乘势崛起。在聚焦经济议题和强调集体行动方面,新民粹主义和后现代主义身份政治迥然不同,但是从强调族群的文化和身份差异的角度来说,新民粹主义又把后现代主义身份政治发展到了极端。后现代主义身份政治是与金融资本的上升期相适应的,新民粹主义是与金融资本的下降期相适应的,但二者都因不理解金融资本的本性而把民众运动引向了错误的方向。只有社会主义民主运动才能赋予民众运动以正确的方向。     

Ideas,spaces and ‘sovereigntyscapes’: Dramatising Scotland's production of a new institutional fix

Abstract

As part of a general endeavour to ‘modernise’ Britain for the epoch of globalisation, Britain's New Labour government has sought to integrate wide‐ranging constitutional reform with new structures for regional governance. Perhaps the most radical proposal concerns the attempt to align continued UK sovereignty with an elected parliament for Scotland in what has been called a ‘new covenant with the people’. This paper draws on Jane Jenson's neo‐Gramscian discourse‐regulation theory and its stress on social agency and the politics of representation, to explore the political, economic and socio‐spatial tensions and the related ideas, discursive forms and political processes that have given rise to this emergent institutional and representational ‘fix’. The author argues that rather than being perceived of solely as some ‘modernisation move’ on the part of a New Labour project, this reconfiguration of power and representation also needs to be traced to the political and representational style of Thatcherism, in particular, the latter's continuous ‘testing’ of the 1707 Treaty between Scotland and England as a negotiated settlement of economic and political union. The paper concludes with some reflections on the future prospects facing any future Scotland‐UK institutional settlement, including the question of sovereignty.     

The ‘Bubbling Up’ of Subterranean Politics in Europe

This article presents the findings of a collaborative research project involving seven field teams across Europe investigating a range of new political phenomena termed ‘subterranean politics’. The article argues that the social mobilizations and collective activities in 2011 and 2012 were probably less joined up, more heterogeneous, and, perhaps, even, smaller, than similar phenomena during the last decade, but what was striking was their ‘resonance’ among mainstream public opinion—the ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics. The main findings included:

• ??Subterranean political actors perceive the crisis as a political crisis rather than a reaction to austerity. Subterranean politics is just as much a characteristic of Germany, where there are no austerity policies, as other countries.

• ??Subterranean political actors are concerned about democracy but not as it is currently practised. They experiment with new democratic practises, in the squares, on the Internet, and elsewhere.

• ??This new political generation not only uses social networking to organize but the Internet has profoundly affected the culture of political activism.

• ??In contrast to mainstream public debates, Europe is ‘invisible’ even though many subterranean political actors feel themselves to be European.

The research concludes that the term ‘subterranean politics’ is a useful concept that needs further investigation and that Europe needs to be problematized to seek a way out of the crisis.     

The need for a third party in u.s. politics

Abstract

This article is based on a presentation to the “Future Directions for American Politics and Public Policy” seminar at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, on May 6, 1993. The theme of the article is that a national third party is necessary in order to advance a social welfare agenda that would improve measurably the quality of urban life, and resolve the problem of race and racism in the United States. The author proposes that despite important changes in race relations, including the elimination of a multi‐generational system of legally‐sanctioned political apartheid, society still reflects continuing and intensifying race and class divisions and tensions. Neither the Democratic or Republican parties have the political will or base to offer policies that would effectively eliminate racial hierarchy in this country. It is argued that the development of a national and organzationally viable third party is essential in order to challenge the philosophical and political tendencies of the major parties regarding social welfare and race, economic development and growth, and foreign affairs. In addition to using a few historical examples to make this case, the author also critiques the exploitation of race as an electoral tool by both major parties.     

The Politics of Inclusive Agreements: towards a Critical Discourse Theory of Democracy

This article offers a critical assessment of Jürgen Habermas's discourse theory of democracy. It suggests that the main thrust of a discursive account of legitimacy is the attempt to show how the demands of maximal democratic inclusion might be reconciled with a politics of reasoned agreements. While this aim is endorsed, the thrust of the argument is that a critical theory of democracy requires that normative frameworks that bring certain substantive features of democratic life into focus should supplement Habermas's procedural approach. First, the account of maximal inclusion has to be developed in a way that clarifies the egalitarian demands of distributive justice. Secondly, the account of a politics of reasoned agreements has to be connected to a theoretical analysis of the bonds of solidarity that could underpin such a form of political engagement. These developments contribute to a critical theory that gives a more adequate account of the motivational basis of discursive democracy.     

Tax and direct expenditures: Perspectives on prepayment proposals

Abstract

If the government were committed to replenishing the inventory of project‐based assisted housing units when losses occurred, owners’ prepayment rights, with prepayment penalties, would be a desirable feature of the program. Additional unsub‐sidized housing units would be created every time a prepayment occurred, the freed‐up subsidies and insurance commitments would support a replacement low‐income unit, and prepayment penalty income could be used to offset mortgage insurance losses and thereby reduce the cost of mortgage insurance.

Under the much less than ideal conditions now prevailing, with no replacement project‐based housing available and no buy out arrangements in place, federal policy must attempt to limit prepayment by the owners of subsidized projects over the next few years.

An approach to establishing a “maximum price” that the government should be prepared to pay to induce each prepayment‐eligible building owner not to prepay is presented.     

Politics as Theory and Politics as Practice

In 1962, the late Professor Sir Bernard Crick published his seminal work In Defence of Politics. Fifty years on, formal political processes have never been in greater need of defending. In this article, former Home Secretary David Blunkett MP argues that in order to defend politics we need to change the way in which we ‘do’ our politics. In a 21st century response to Professor Crick's challenge to defend the role of politics in providing a counterweight to the financial markets and economic imperialism, Blunkett considers how it is possible to renew political democracy as a force for progressive change. The last five years of political and financial turmoil have seen politics smeared and even, in the case of Greece and Italy, elected governments removed and replaced by technocrats. With the power of government behind the people, it would be possible to foster a whole new spirit of seeing the political process as a way of organising, advising and yes funding a demand for something better from big institutions both public and private.