Divergent fates: company unions and employee involvement committees under the railway labor and national labor relations acts

Well known is that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, 1935) in the United States places a largely per se ban on nonunion employee representation (ER) groups which deal with employers over a term or condition of employment. Much less well known is that America’s other labor law, the Railway Labor Act (RLA, 1926), takes a different approach and permits employers to operate such councils and committees as long as they do not perform a collective bargaining function or interfere with workers’ free choice of a bargaining agent. Thus, under the RLA Delta Air Lines is able to operate what is today the closest living approximation to a 1920s-style ER plan while hundreds of other companies (e.g. Polaroid) under the jurisdiction of the NLRA have been forced over the years to disband similar groups on grounds they are a proscribed company union. No study to date has explored the history behind the RLA and NLRA’s divergent treatment of nonunion ER groups so this article takes a first look. The main part of the story covers the 1920–1935 period and examines the events, people, and experiences associated with company unions and ER in, respectively, the rail and manufacturing industries and why the legislative outcome in the former was a permissive stance on nonunion committees but prohibitive in the latter. The last part of the paper fast-forwards the RLA-NLRA story from the 1930s to contemporary law and practice in order to demonstrate how “history matters” when it comes to what employers can and cannot do with nonunion representation groups, such as works councils, participation and involvement committees, and dispute resolution forums.     

Conceptualising and tracing the increased territorialisation of politics: insights from Argentina

The territorialisation of politics is a crucial transformation in state–society relations that has implications on how contemporary politics works. Defined here as the dispute for the physical control of space, be it a municipality, province or portion of land, within one or more politically constituted entities. It does not mean the emergence of a new regime type, but the process through which the territory re-emerges as a new cleavage after neoliberal reforms and authoritarian regimes have weakened/dissolved neo-corporatist arrangements for the resolution of socio-political conflicts in society. It is a cleavage because central political divisions are produced as a result of the physical encounter of or distance between political actors and of the dispute for the control of a territory for sociopolitical goals and causes that are not always territorially defined. Departing from this definition, I also raise potential explanatory hypotheses for the transformations that favoured this transformation in Argentina.     

Turkifying Poverty,or: the Phantom Pain of Izmir’s Lost Christian Working Class, 1924–26

This article shows that ‘Turkification’, a term widely used by historians of modern Turkey to refer to the forced transfer of property from Christian into Muslim hands, ought to be conceptualized not only in the sense of ‘enrichment’ but also, with regard to the working classes, as a process in which Muslim people inherited the poverty of their Christian predecessors. Taking ?zmir as a case in point, the article first describes the plight of the overwhelmingly Christian working class prior to 1922. It then studies reports and editorials that discussed the economic and social situation in ?zmir in the years 1923 to 1926, after the Turkish victory and forced migration of her Christian population. Over the course of these years, ?zmir experienced a serious economic crisis, and bread prices reached levels that led to widespread undernourishment and hunger among the city?s poor. Agricultural production was lagging behind pre-war levels, and positive effects of ‘Turkification? policies were failing to materialize. By analyzing the contemporary journalists? attempts at explaining the crisis, but also pointing out national and transnational factors that they were probably unaware of, the article makes an original contribution to the economic and social history of early republican Turkey.     

How authoritarian rulers seek to legitimize repression: framing mass killings in Egypt and Uzbekistan

How do authoritarian rulers legitimate repressive actions against their own citizens? Although most research depicts repression and legitimation as opposed strategies of political rule, justified coercion against some groups may generate legitimacy in the eyes of other parts of the population. Building upon this suggested link between legitimation and repression, this article studies the justifications of mass killings. To this end, framing theory is combined with recent research on the domestic and international dimensions of authoritarian rule. We contend that frames are directed towards specific audiences at home and abroad. Moreover, given the common threats at the global level and the diffusion of repressive tactics, we assume that learning processes influence discursive justifications of repression in authoritarian regimes. We provide an analysis of government rhetoric by comparing the protest crackdowns of Rabi’a ‘Adawiya Square in Egypt and Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan, taking into account the audiences and the sources of the frames that justify repression. In both cases, we find the terrorism frame to emerge as dominant.     

South Korean views on Japan's constitutional reform under the Abe government

In this Special Section, this article reviews South Korean views on Japan's ‘peace’ Constitution and the Abe government's attempts at constitutional reform. It identifies three different understandings among South Korean academics on why Japan is escalating attempts to revise the Constitution under the Abe government. An in-depth analysis demonstrates that all three perspectives pay specific attention to Japan's constitutional reform in relation to security policy changes. However, they differ in assessing the impact of Japan's constitutional reform on South Korea as well as how South Korea should deal with such a change. A minority opinion considers Japan's ‘remilitarisation’ through constitutional revision as conducive to South Korean security interests by increasing deterrence against North Korea, whereas the dominant opinion is that any attempt to revise the Constitution could be in and of itself a potential threat to South Korea's security due to a lack of trust attributed to unresolved historical conflicts between Korea and Japan. However, all three approaches pay hardly any attention to the positive role of Japan's peace Constitution while Japan's peace Constitution might provide a regional peace model in Northeast Asia.     

Identifying the Causes of Issue Attention and Policy Change: Evidence from U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Drilling Policy, 2008

The flow of attention in the policy process is dynamic and disruptive. While we know changes in issue attention often result in policy change, the causal mechanisms underlying the different stages of the attention allocation process remain unclear. This article uses Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to examine an underdeveloped aspect of issue attention within policy‐making institutions: how specific policy indicators influence the entry and exit of issues on policy‐making agendas. Partisan issue attention in the House of Representatives is used to analyze a significant change to U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drilling policy in 2008. The results highlight how historically high gasoline prices precipitated a shift in attention to offshore drilling and subsequent policy change. Moreover, gasoline prices Granger‐cause attention to energy policy in partisan speeches over time. The analysis further reveals how competing policy frames and a salient focusing event shaped congressional and public discourse, leading to subsequent changes in attention. Taken together, the findings broaden our understanding of the policy process by identifying the specific forces behind the entry and exit of issues on the policy‐making agenda.     

Congressional Attention and Opportunity Structures: The Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee

This article examines the role that overlapping committee jurisdictions play in fostering or hindering attention to environmental and energy issues in the U.S. Congress. The Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, created by House Democrats in 2007 , and its chairman Rep. Ed Markey took advantage of opportunities within the existing jurisdictional arrangement to increase attention to these issues despite lacking any legislative authority. Data from the 110th and 111th Congresses show that the Select Committee held more hearings on climate change and alternative energy, and on environmental and energy policy generally, than any other committee. The committee also increased the range of sources informing debate on these issues by calling different witnesses than other committees. These findings have important implications for the relationship between institutional structure and agendas and for Congress' policy‐making role on energy and the environment.     

Projecting the Arena of Inclusion: The Case of South Korea in Pursuing a Phased Inclusive Growth Process

South Korea created a mechanism that fuels inclusive growth, a process that coevolves economic growth and social well‐being. This study attempts to elaborate on the context and preconditions for development that would manifest salience policy implications for moving up the industrial value chain and attain inclusive growth. We contend against the view of simplified growth cum equity that is used to elucidate the success of Korea's socioeconomic development (economic miracles). Our findings informed us that there were intense measures taken throughout different phases of Korea's industrial development. In addition, we observed in many occasions intense negotiations between the state, firms, and civil society for social welfare and a better working environment. This led to a pursuit for inclusive growth in the post catching‐up phase that blended together many inclusive agendas, realizing growth that coevolved industrial upgrading and social welfare. This article seeks to explain how Korea populated its arena of inclusion in the process of pursuing rapid industrialization. The overview of different phases of development provides normative principles that are useful as a guide for other economies which aspire to attain similar development.     

The Formal Delegation of Regulatory Decisions in the Telecommunication Sector: An Explanation Using Classification Trees

Research on regulation has traditionally focused on studying the delegation of regulatory competencies from political principals to an independent regulatory agency. In this article, we argue that this delegation is nuanced by different factors that affect whether a specific regulatory decision is formally delegated. We examine and explain formal delegation patterns at the level of individual regulatory decisions in twelve countries located in Europe, Latin America, and South Asia. The data were gathered by coding the twelve countries' telecommunications legislation. The data analysis was undertaken using a classification tree model—a nonparametric model. We found that the maturity of the market has the greatest effect on the formal delegation of regulatory decisions, but this effect is also influenced by the other theoretical factors considered, particularly the level of political constraints and the type of regulation.     

The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Prior research on policy conflicts indicates a tendency among policy actors to misperceive the influence of actors engaged in policy debates based on the degree of distance between their relative policy positions. This research develops a measure for assessing the degree and direction of the misperception effect. This measure is then utilized as a dependent variable to assess the relationship between theoretically relevant factors and the degree to which actors will exaggerate the influence of their opponents and allies. The research uses original survey data of policy actors engaged in the debate over hydraulic fracturing in New York. The results indicate misperceptions of relative influence are prevalent and most associated with the experience of a policy loss and holding relatively extreme policy beliefs. The findings provide new insight into factors that influence the demonization of political opponents. These insights are timely in the context of polarized debates over environmental and energy policy in the United States.