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6 - INTRODUCTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2010

Miriam A. Golden
Affiliation:
Professor of political science, University of California at Los Angeles
David Austen-Smith
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
Jeffry A. Frieden
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Miriam A. Golden
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Karl Ove Moene
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Oslo
Adam Przeworski
Affiliation:
New York University
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Summary

Empirical work on trade unions and organized labor in advanced nations underwent a resurgence beginning in the 1970s. The initial impetus was twofold: first, the strike wave that in the closing years of the 1960s swept across the European countries – most markedly France and Italy, but elsewhere as well (Crouch and Pizzorno 1978) – and second, the growing recognition in the years following the first oil shock in the winter of 1973 that wage militancy was a potentially important factor affecting inflation, unemployment, and ultimately economic growth (Bruno and Sachs 1985; Olson 1982). These two sets of events sparked new interest in problems of comparative trade unions, industrial relations, and wage militancy, problems that had lain largely outside the purview of political science in the preceding decades. Unions were now seen as political organizations, both in the sense that their internal organization exhibited political features and in the sense that their activities carried with them consequences of significance for the political realm.

This part includes four of Michael Wallerstein's most important contributions to the study of trade unions in advanced industrial economies. Although the papers display a range of analytic strategies, they are all concerned with understanding variations in union strength and organization, as well as the possible effects of these variations on wage outcomes. A central thread connecting all four essays concerns the centralization of collective bargaining, a core topic of Wallerstein's (1985) doctoral dissertation, to which he returned many times thereafter.

Type
Chapter
Information
Selected Works of Michael Wallerstein
The Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy
, pp. 109 - 115
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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References

Blanchard, Olivier, and Wolfers, Justin. 2000. “The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence.” Economic Journal 111 (462, March): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruno, Michael, and Sachs, Jeffrey. 1985. The Economics of Worldwide Stagflation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calmfors, Lars, and Driffill, John. 1988. “Bargaining Structure, Corporatism, and Macroeconomic Performance.” Economic Policy 3 (6, April): 13–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crouch, Colin, and Pizzorno, Alessandro, eds. 1978. The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968. 2 vols.; New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Ebbinghaus, Bernhard, and Visser, Jelle. 2000. The Development of Trade Unions in Western Europe since 1945. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golden, Miriam A., Peter Lange, and Michael Wallerstein. 1999. Dataset on Unions, Employers, Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations for 16 OECD Countries. Available at http://www.shelley.polsci.ucla.edu/data.
Golden, Miriam, Peter Lange, and Michael Wallerstein. 2006. Union Centralization among Advanced Industrial Societies: An Empirical Study. Available at http://www.shelley.polisci.ucla.edu/. Version dated June 16, 2006
Hall, Peter A., and Soskice, David. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, and Teune, Henry. 1970. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Schmitter, Philippe C., and Lehmbruch, Gerhard, eds. 1979. Trends towards Corporatist Intermediation. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Stephens, John D., and Wallerstein, Michael. 1991. “Industrial Concentration, Country Size, and Trade Union Membership,” American Political Science Review 85 (3, Sept.): 941–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallerstein, Michael. 1985. “Working Class Solidarity and Rational Behavior.” Unpublished dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago.

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