Free collective bargaining and incomes policy: learning from Barbara Wootton and Hugh Clegg on post‐war British Industrial Relations and wage inequality

Growing income inequality has returned as a major political issue in affluent, advanced economies, often associated directly with the decline of trade unions and collective bargaining. In policy terms, this has been reflected in the British campaign for a ‘Living Wage’ and the new German minimum wage. Yet on the broader front, Industrial Relations (IR) struggles to find a credible regulatory strategy to address inequality—one that combines state and civil society initiatives and can be legitimised in political philosophy. This History and Policy article argues that there is much to learn from the IR past, before neo‐liberalism. My focus is the writing of Barbara Wootton and Hugh Clegg on ‘Incomes Policy’, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, when this was a central intellectual and policy issue in British IR. I explore the differing justifications for Incomes Policy, from corporatist macro‐economic management to social equality, comparing and contrasting the democratic socialist political principles of Wootton with Clegg's social democratic pluralism. The conclusion relates this historical debate between state pattern and civil society process to current concerns about how social democratic ideas and IR policy can address the problem of labour market inequality.     

Populism in South America: Democratic Panacea or Pitfall?

Populism has become a buzz word in recent years, used widely by journalists, political pundits, and academics. Much of the discussion presents the global phenomenon as a recent one. However, one version or another has existed in South America for nearly a century. In this article, I put forth a political strategic definition of populism that includes an actor's political style, relationship with followers, political organization, and political history. Using this conceptualization, I score several presidential candidates’ campaign behavior during recent elections, between the years 2011 and 2015. I also consider the democratic consequences of two of the continents’ most visible and longest‐serving populists, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. I examine the change over time in both countrie's political systems regarding the respect for civil liberties and political rights, changes in citizens’ attitudes towards the democratic quality of their respective countries, and the variation in socioeconomic inequality. I conclude with an assessment of each populist's democratic consequence and discuss potential for future research.     

The wisdom of demagogues: institutions,corruption and support for authoritarian populists

This article analyses the drivers of support for authoritarian populist parties in Europe. Such parties claim to represent the interests of ordinary people against greedy and out‐of‐touch elites. Simultaneously, they reject conventional constraints on democratic policymaking. In recent years, such parties on the political left and right have been gaining influence in countries across Europe. Using a panel data set from 1980–2016, we use semiparametric Tobit models with country fixed effects to explain support for authoritarian populists. We find that large vote shares of right‐wing – but not left‐wing – authoritarian populists are associated closely to corruption. Other commonly cited explanations such as unemployment, inequality and immigration perform poorly in predicting support for populist political platforms on the political right. While a full theoretical explanation of the link between corruption and right‐wing populism remains beyond the scope of this article, we suggest that the mechanism involves political trust. Corruption weakens trust in political institutions, which populists exploit. Curbing the rise of right‐wing authoritarian populism in Europe will thus require restoring trust in the integrity of politics.     

Democratization of Brazilian Health Councils: The Paradox of Bringing the Other Side into the Tent

Contemporary discussions of ‘democratic innovation experiences’ have evolved into a heated debate about how effective these ‘new spaces’ are in including ordinary citizens, particularly those traditionally marginalized and excluded. This article focuses on the Brazilian experience with Health Councils and begins by discussing the conditions that have been pointed out by previous studies as favouring the inclusion of these groups in these ‘new spaces’. On the basis of these studies, one question that remains is about the democratic legitimacy of these experiences, as it seems that there is a bias towards the inclusion of those that already have political ties with the traditional political system. The local Health Councils in 31 subprefeituras(new administrative subdivisions) of the city of São Paulo were researched and a continuum was observed: ranging from a small number of one or two sectors that have historical ties with political parties included in the council to a far more diversified composition, including up to seven sectors with autonomous representatives and various types of association. Using these results as their starting‐point, the analyses conclude with a discussion of the relative significance of the factors previously identified as central in establishing the democratic legitimacy of these ‘new democratic spaces’.     

What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?

The relationship between urbanization and democratization remains under‐theorized and under‐researched. Radical urban theory has undergone a veritable normative turn, registered in debates about the right to the city, spatial justice and the just city, while critical conceptualizations of neoliberalism present ‘democracy’ as the preferred remedy for injustice. However, these lines of thought remain reluctant to venture too far down the path of political philosophy. The relationship between urban politics and the dynamics of democratization remains under‐theorized as a result. It is argued that this relationship can be usefully understood by drawing on lessons from avowedly normative styles of political theorizing, specifically post‐Habermasian strands of critical theory. Taking this tradition seriously helps one to notice that discussions of urbanization, democracy, injustice and rights in geography, urban studies and related fields invoke an implicit but unthematized democratic norm, that of all‐affected interests. In contemporary critical theory, this norm is conceptualized as a worldly register of political demands. It is argued that the conceptual disaggregation of component values of democracy undertaken through the ‘spatial turn’ in recent critical theory reorients the analysis of the democratic potentials of urban politics around the investigation of the multiple forms of agency which urbanized processes perform in generating, recognizing and acting upon issues of shared concern.     

Financialisation,ownership and employee interests under private equity at the AA,part two

This article examines a theoretically informed case study of the effects of financialisation at the workplace. It focuses in particular on trade union de‐recognition and trade union recognition in the furtherance of ownership interests. The paper reports on the continued diffusion of investor‐owner interests under the private equity business model which has recently witnessed the AA re‐listed on the stock market. It addresses two research questions. One, how are investor‐owner interests secured by trade union de‐recognition and re‐recognition? Two, how and why, as a de‐recognised trade union, does the GMB continue to campaign for and represent GMB members in the AA when the IDU (the independent democratic union) has sole recognition at the firm?     

A new‐institutionalist perspective on ISO 14000 and Responsible Care

This paper examines why US firms are lukewarm towards ISO 14000 while the US chemical industry has enthusiastically adopted Responsible Care. It also briefly explores why European and Asian firms are eagerly adopting ISO 14000. Employing a new‐institutionalist framework it argues that firms have incentives to adopt beyond‐compliance voluntary programs only if they perceive excludable benefits exceeding excludable costs. Institutions, the central conceptual pillar in a new‐institutionalist framework, are important in shaping perceptions of benefits and costs and the extent of their excludability. US regulators can encourage adoption of ISO 14000 by granting attorney–client privileges and enhancing levels of regulatory relief. Firms, in turn, need to appreciate the political constraints of the EPA on this issue. They could relax these constraints by addressing the apprehensions of EPA’s key constituents. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

THE GROWING INVOLVEMENT OF FOREIGN NGOs IN SETTING POLICY AGENDAS AND POLITICAL DECISION‐MAKING IN AFRICA

Two case studies from Kenya demonstrate the malign impact on policy‐making and political decision‐making of foreign NGOs with single issue agendas. They gain acceptance for their minority views by using financial strength and access to economic and political elites in order to subvert what should be representative democratic processes.     

Is This What The Democratic City Looks Like? Local Democracy,Housing Rights and Homeownership in the Portuguese Context

This article analyses the creation of a normative framework for the democratic city during the regime change in Portugal in 1975—the answers that were given to the question, ‘What should a city be like in a democratic regime?’ While I critically discuss post‐democracy and its use of post‐foundational contributions, I review the post‐revolution Portuguese constitutional debate, contending that the call for democratization brought by urban popular organizations was answered with a political compromise that exchanged expectations of a participatory city for a commitment to a social rights city, enhanced with a promise of homeownership for urban popular segments. In light of this, in this article I question post‐democratic proposals, arguing that when this approach implicitly establishes equivalence between democracy and ‘the political’, it has difficulties in interpreting how the grammar of democracy is ‘organized’ in conflictual and contingent processes of democratic institutionalization. As an alternative, I contend that a critical debate concerning democracy and the urban must address how democratic expectations of emancipation have been translated into institutions and rights through interwoven and situated processes of politicization and depoliticization that allow both politicization of the urban and the production of consent .     

Authority and Commitment: Why Universities, Like Legislatures, Are Not Organized as Firms

This paper explores the functions and limitations of democratic governance by analyzing the allocation of decision-making authority in colleges and universities. Contrary to the conventional perception that large numbers and heterogeneity of voters and issues undermine the efficiency of democratic decision making, data on the allocation of authority for thirty-one decision areas in 826 US colleges and universities show democratic governance to be more prevalent in larger, "full-service" research universities than in smaller liberal arts colleges and special-curriculum institutions. State- and church-affiliated institutions, meanwhile, tend to be governed more like firms. The results overall are consistent with economic theories of political organization that view democratic governance primarily as a means of enhancing the credibility of commitments rather than as a method of aggregating preferences.

"Educational systems, like governments, apparently can never be rational,never a logical and economical means to a definite end.Rather must they be always makeshifts."

— J.P. Munroe (1899)     

The Neoliberalization of Municipal Land Policy in Sweden

In Sweden, local governments’ practice of the ‘municipal land instrument’—that is, the use of public land ownership as a tool for facilitating urban development—has a long tradition. In the post‐war era, public land ownership constituted an important component of state‐led housing production, which had both a productive and a redistributive purpose. Departing from a political economy perspective, this article demonstrates how the redistributive aspect of the municipal land instrument has been dissolved under neoliberalization, and discusses why the use of this instrument is problematic from both a democratic and ethical point of view. Based on a case study in Helsingborg, the article argues that, in using public land to leverage private investment in urban development, local decision makers adopt an interest in supporting rent extraction from tenants and housing owners, while subsidizing investment costs for developers. The dual role that municipalities assume as landowner‐developers and planning authorities enable them to facilitate urban development effectively, but it is also problematic because it transgresses the public–private law divide inherent to Swedish law. Assuming this dual role, municipalities place themselves in a biased position that risks undermining the legitimacy of governmental actions in general, and the planning system in particular.     

Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA)

It has recently been argued that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ‘political’. It has been neglected however, that firms also operate politically in a traditional sense, in seeking to secure favourable political conditions for their businesses. We argue that there are potential synergies between CSR and corporate political activity (CPA) that are often overlooked by firms and that recognition of these synergies will stimulate firms to align their CSR and CPA. We develop a conceptual model that specifies how various configurations of a firm's CSR and CPA – alignment, misalignment, and non‐alignment – affect the firm's reputation beyond the separate reputation effects of CSR and CPA. This model has important implications for understanding how and why firms should pay attention to their CPA and CSR configurations, and thereby contributes to the broader issue of why firms should make sure that they are consistent in terms of responding to stakeholder concerns.     

How Foundations Exercise Power

Foundations (and philanthropy in general) have great political power in the United States and worldwide, yet this is hardly noted by political analysts or journalists. Their power is exerted in many ways, such as by funding progressive organizations and movements; sponsoring policy “think tanks” and organizations of public officials; influencing the political culture through media, academic researchers, and university programs (including public interest law in law schools); and co‐opting activists and potential rebels among the rich and poor. Because of their resources and prestige, they are powerful members of coalitions and collaborations with overt and covert government departments, U.N. agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations. Foundations have been major actors in the “Cold War,” which continues as the attempt to deflect any movement towards socialism here or abroad. Globalization has amplified the power of foundations, for many of the global institutions were created by foundations and continue to be fostered by them. The sponsorship of civil society institutions worldwide by private foundations, now with additional billions from governments and international governmental institutions, supports U.S. hegemony: military, political, and economic. We cannot know what the world would have been like absent foundation activities, but the current one does not appear to have a democratic, peaceful, or sustainable future.     

The Effectiveness of Delhi's Fire Safety Regulation Amidst Poverty,Ignorance, Corruption and Non‐Compliance

This paper considers the effectiveness of fire safety regulation in Delhi, India. Ten theories are summarised that are used to explain why regulation does or does not work, or why fires might increase. Can imperfect markets generate institutions outside of the political process that produce reasonable results despite challenges of poverty, rising population density, social chaos, widespread corruption and non‐compliance with rules? In Delhi, city fire departments, albeit hampered by dysfunctional or non‐existent regulation, along with social and individual incentives provided by markets, have produced a relatively high level of safety.     

Politics in wage setting: does government colour matter?

This paper studies the relationship between wage formation and the political colour of the government in an economy with a centralized wage bargaining system. Ideological, organizational and personal ties between the central trade union and the social democratic political party suggest that the trade union may behave significantly different in wage negotiations under a social democratic than under a conservative government. Using time series data for Norway, we estimate that changing from a conservative to a social democratic central government significantly reduces manufacturing wages and makes wages more responsive to unemployment. This result is consistent with a wage bargaining model augmented by political preferences of the union leaders and suggests that the effect of bargaining coordination depends on the political colour of the government. The estimated effects are both robust with respect to model specification and stable over time. We are grateful to Fredrik Wulfsberg, participants at seminars in Trondheim and Oslo, and an anonymous referee for valuable comments.     

Positively negative: the impact of negativity upon the political consumer

• For years there has been an ongoing debate as to the role and impact that ‘marketing’ has had on politics. Yet, it is the case that many of the concepts associated with the field of marketing have real relevance and have, in fact, been employed within the field of political campaigning for many decades. This is an empirical paper that focuses upon the concept of political brands and the impact that current trends in campaign strategy, and in particular the growth and continued use of negative campaigning, have upon them. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the implications associated with such activity are examined and, in particular, its effect upon the consumer/brand relationship.
• Within the consideration of the results, it becomes clear that political brands' use of negative campaigning is somewhat shortsighted; offering short‐term gains but at the cost of long‐term damage not only to their brand image but also to the wider democratic system as it stands. In a search for political ‘brands’ that more effectively meet their needs, there appears a tendency for political consumers to now look outside of the conventional political sector. The emergent concept of the ‘negative brand’ is explored together with the implications for political consumers, political brands and the wider field of conventional party politics.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bourgeoisie Out, Expertoisie In: The New Political Economies at Loggerheads

Part I of our paper pinpoints the “political” in the new political economies: first, the distinction between political, public, and civic economies that are almost invariably confused; second, the role of power politics, force, and fraud in determining income differentials in the name of market forces. Part II pinpoints the “new” in twentieth‐century political economies: first, the emergence of a fourth factor of production in addition to labor, capital, and land, whether identified with organization, knowledge, headwork, education, brainpower, management, or information; second, the subordination of capital to this new factor; third, the formation of a new social class based on its ownership; fourth, the struggle between the owners of capital and the new class for control over decision making and for the lion's share in distribution; fifth, the reliance on government to protect and advance the interests of the new class of professionals; and sixth, the eclipse of the old class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletarians by a new class struggle between managers and managed, executives and executants, “knows” and “know‐nots.” Part III pinpoints the “loggerheads” or sources of dissension between the “human capital” and post‐capitalist variants of the new political economies: first, over whether the expertoisie constitute a new social class or a fraction of the bourgeoisie; second, over whether the new economic order constitutes an advanced stage of capitalism or the advent of a post‐capitalist society; and third, whether the “knows” exploit the “know‐nots” through their monopoly of economic and political power. Why “political,” why “new,” and why “at loggerheads”? Our essay divides into three parts our tentative answers to these questions.     

DELIBERATIVE MONETARY VALUATION: IN SEARCH OF A DEMOCRATIC AND VALUE PLURAL APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

The use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non‐economic values. In this review, two broad approaches are identified: preference economisation and preference moralisation. The former is analytical, concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism. The latter emphasises political legitimacy, appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest. Both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence, which undermine the prospects for value pluralism. As a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice. In order to maintain democratic credentials, the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an “agreement to pay”. To this end we identify a discourse‐based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation.     

Worker responses to teamworking: exploring employee attributions of managerial motives

This paper examines employee views of why and how managers introduced teamworking at several sites within a steel company. Following a content analysis of employee comments we classify employee views of management motives into four main types: economic, political, institutional and cultural. Employees reported that managers were primarily driven by political rationales and implemented teamworking for reasons of self-interest. The economic rationales for management action were interpreted negatively as favouring shareholders and increasing worker insecurity. The introduction of teamworking also appeared to require a concerted attempt to enforce employee compliance, indicating that culture change was also an important factor. The views employees expressed of management intent are not adequately described by either recent advocates of high performance work systems or the critical perspective on human resource management although they appear central in understanding employee responses to management initiatives in these sites.     

Donors and domestic politics: Political influences on foreign aid effort

The vast majority of scholarship on foreign aid looks at either the effectiveness of foreign aid or why particular countries receive aid from particular donors. This paper takes a different approach: what are the domestic sources of support for foreign aid? Specifically, how does the donor's domestic political and economic environment influence ‘aid effort’? This paper uses a time-series cross-sectional data set to analyze the influence of changes in political and economic variables. As governments become more conservative, their aid effort is likely to fall. Domestic political variables appear to influence aid effort, but only for aid to low income countries and multilaterals while aid effort to middle income countries in unaffected. This suggests that models solely emphasizing donor economic and international strategic interests as determinants of donor aid policy may be mis-specified. These results also suggest sources of aid volatility that might influence recipient growth prospects.