Working-Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain

Working-Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain PDF Author: Robert M. Fishman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501745778
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, the long repressed Spanish labor movement faced two challenges: to contribute to the transformation of the national political system, and to use newly achieved freedoms to build its own organizational presence. Focusing on areas of potential conflict between these two broad objectives, Robert Fishman here traces the development of the complex political role and organizational development of the Spanish workers' movement in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Drawing on rich empirical data including interviews with 324 plant-level labor leaders, Fishman examines the interplay between various unions' efforts to organize labor and to deal with national politics. He shows how the workers' movement, long an advocate of a ruptura or clear break with the Francoist past, came to support a process of negotiated reform and mobilizational restraint. Labor leaders' belief in the legitimacy of the democratic state, Fishman demonstrates, can serve as a key predictor of their willingness to support negotiated wage restraint. In emphasizing the crucial role of plant-level labor leaders in national political processes, Fishman offers an innovative methodological approach to the analysis of the collective efforts of labor. Political scientists, sociologists, historians of labor movements, and observers of contemporary Western Europe and Latin America will read it with interest.

Working-Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain

Working-Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain PDF Author: Robert M. Fishman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501745778
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, the long repressed Spanish labor movement faced two challenges: to contribute to the transformation of the national political system, and to use newly achieved freedoms to build its own organizational presence. Focusing on areas of potential conflict between these two broad objectives, Robert Fishman here traces the development of the complex political role and organizational development of the Spanish workers' movement in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Drawing on rich empirical data including interviews with 324 plant-level labor leaders, Fishman examines the interplay between various unions' efforts to organize labor and to deal with national politics. He shows how the workers' movement, long an advocate of a ruptura or clear break with the Francoist past, came to support a process of negotiated reform and mobilizational restraint. Labor leaders' belief in the legitimacy of the democratic state, Fishman demonstrates, can serve as a key predictor of their willingness to support negotiated wage restraint. In emphasizing the crucial role of plant-level labor leaders in national political processes, Fishman offers an innovative methodological approach to the analysis of the collective efforts of labor. Political scientists, sociologists, historians of labor movements, and observers of contemporary Western Europe and Latin America will read it with interest.

Iberian Trade Unionism

Iberian Trade Unionism PDF Author: Jose Magone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351325663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
One of the most neglected areas of the European integration process is the role that trade union confederations may play after the full establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union. The gradual establishment of the four freedoms enshrined in the Single European Act would require a transformation of the present strategies of trade union confederations toward more flexibility and towards the ability to take part in different levels of the European integration process. Iberian Trade Unionism highlights the emerging patterns of cooperation between national, subnational, and supranational actors and the impact on these different levels. Unlike most literature on the study of democratization and Europeanization, Iberian Trade Unionism aims to break the dominant focus on political parties and political institutions by raising awareness of the importance of interest groups such as trade union confederations in contributing to a strengthening of democratic governance. The central thesis is that both Portuguese and Spanish trade unions are becoming increasingly part of a transnational European strategy which shapes the internal organizations toward professionalism and democratization. Part 1, "Gontextualizing Iberian Trade Union Strategies," deals with the operations of both Portuguese and Spanish trade union confederations. Part 2, "The National Systems of Interest Intermediation and Trade Union Confederation Strategies," analyzes the transformation of the national systems of intermediation in the 1990s which were affected by a decline in steering power of Spanish and Portuguese political systems vis-a-vis global and European political and economic processes. Part 3, "Subnational and Transnational Policies of Iberian Trade Union Confederations," deals with policies and strategies. The last chapter treats the integration of Iberian trade union confederations in the institutions of the European Union as well as the ITUCs and is based on original research done in Madrid, Lisbon, and Brussels. This timely look at interest groups and lobbying in the European Union will appeal to scholars studying European integration and the role of interest groups in it, and to students of Spain, Portugal, or southern Europe.

Transitions to Democracy

Transitions to Democracy PDF Author: Lisa Anderson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231502478
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Are the factors that initiate democratization the same as those that maintain a democracy already established? The scholarly and policy debates over this question have never been more urgent. In 1970, Dankwart A. Rustow's clairvoyant article "Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model" questioned the conflation of the primary causes and sustaining conditions of democracy and democratization. Now this collection of essays by distinguished scholars responds to and extends Rustow's classic work, Transitions to Democracy--which originated as a special issue of the journal Comparative Politics and contains three new articles written especially for this volume--represents much of the current state of the large and growing literature on democratization in American political science. The essays simultaneously illustrate the remarkable reach of Rustow's prescient article across the decades and reveal what the intervening years have taught us. In light of the enormous opportunities of the post-Cold War world for the promotion of democratic government in parts of the world once thought hopelessly lost of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, this timely collection constitutes and important contribution to the debates and efforts to promote the more open, responsive, and accountable government we associate with democracy.

Democratic Practice

Democratic Practice PDF Author: Robert M. Fishman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190912898
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
At a time of growing concern over the fate of contemporary democracy this book shows how vast differences between countries in forms of political conduct, and taken for granted assumptions, determine what democracies actually accomplish. In Democratic Practice, Robert M. Fishman elucidates why some democracies include the economically underprivileged, and cultural others within the circles of political relevance that set policies and the political agenda, whereas others exclude them. On the basis of in-depth research on Portugal and Spain, Fishman develops a theoretically innovative explanation for the breadth of democratic inclusion and draws out large implications for democracies everywhere. Democratic Practice examines the record of two countries that began the worldwide turn to democracy in the 1970s, showing how and why basic assumptions about what democracy is, and how political actors should treat one another, diverged. The book offers detailed empirical evidence on how an inclusive approach to democratic politics provides major benefits not only for the poor and excluded but also for others, drawing large lessons for contemporary democracies.

Spain, 1833-2002

Spain, 1833-2002 PDF Author: Mary Vincent
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191607010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
This book provides a cultural history of Spanish politics from the civil war of 1833 to the Spanish adoption of the Euro in 2002, a period dominated for the most part by violent military interventions in the political process, a succession of weak, unstable, but repressive governments, and the ever-present threat of rebellion from below, and culminating in the victory and repressive dictatorship of General Franco. Using a wide range of sources, both textual and material, Mary Vincent focuses on the question of how ordinary people came to identify themselves both as citizens and as Spaniards throughout this turbulent period. She argues that a weak state rather than a weak sense of nation was the key to Spain's problematic development and that this is the key to explaining both the persistence of political violence and the strength of regional nationalism in modern Spain. But, as Vincent shows, from the 1970s, with modernization of the state and the introduction of democratic politics, all Spaniards - including Catalans and Basques - enthusiastically adopted an additional identity, that of Europeans. And, while questions over the territorial unity of the Spanish state have still not been wholly resolved, nevertheless the political choices facing Spaniards today are very similar to those of other western European nations - and Spanish singularity appears, at last, to be consigned to the past.

Democracy's Voices

Democracy's Voices PDF Author: Robert M. Fishman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501727176
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Building on one of sociology's core ideas—that social ties can shape collective outcomes—Democracy's Voices shows that connections across class boundaries can remake public rhetoric and thus the quality of democratic life. Robert M. Fishman takes up a question of enduring significance to people concerned with the quality of democratic public life, focusing on why political rhetoric proves engaging and broadly relevant, or disengaging and narrow. The answer to that question, he argues, is to be found not only in the deeds of prominent politicians and the nature of official institutions but also in the existence and the character of social connections among ordinary citizens. Fishman's book, based on long-term fieldwork and systematic survey research in Spain, identifies the special contribution to democratic quality made by conversations between intellectuals and workers. Fishman focuses on what he calls the "discursive horizons" of local leaders and communities: the actual location of the problems and proposed remedies articulated in political rhetorics. Democracy's Voices shows how the subcultural context of social ties may accentuate or diminish their power to reshape rhetorics. Fishman argues that conversations are able to remake public rhetorics whereas ties that take the form of brokerage lack that ability. The book also offers a general critique of social capital theory and argues that the full ability of social ties to shape collective outcomes can only be observed when one distinguishes in useful ways among types of ties.

Working through the Past

Working through the Past PDF Author: Teri L. Caraway
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455472
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Democratization in the developing and postcommunist world has yielded limited gains for labor. Explanations for this phenomenon have focused on the effect of economic crisis and globalization on the capacities of unions to become influential political actors and to secure policies that benefit their members. In contrast, the contributors to Working through the Past highlight the critical role that authoritarian legacies play in shaping labor politics in new democracies, providing the first cross-regional analysis of the impact of authoritarianism on labor, focusing on East and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Legacies from the predemocratic era shape labor’s present in ways that both limit and enhance organized labor’s power in new democracies. Assessing the comparative impact on a variety of outcomes relevant to labor in widely divergent settings, this volume argues that political legacies provide new insights into why labor movements in some countries have confronted the challenges of neoliberal globalization better than others.

The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain

The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain PDF Author: Pierre Broué
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781931859516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An outstanding history that shows how a promising workers' movement ended in a fascist victory.

Working on Rights

Working on Rights PDF Author: Anna Delius
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110768941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This book is the first to connect global labor history and the history of human rights: By focusing on democratic labor oppositions in Spain and Poland between 1960 and 1990, it shows how workers in authoritarian regimes addressed repression and whether they developed a language of rights in the light of a globally dynamic human rights discourse. The study argues that the democratic labor oppositions in Spain and Poland were both variants of emancipatory and democracy-oriented social movements with global interconnections that emerged in the 1960s. It reveals that the demands for free and independent trade unions, which in both countries became a flashpoint in the fight for broader democratic demands, was not always discussed in rights terms, but rather presented as an inevitable necessity. At the same time, these labor movements and their intellectual allies morally delegitimized state repression against workers and thereby employed the concepts of democracy, participation, solidarity, progress and eventually, rights. Integrating the history of two European semi-peripheric societies into a broader narrative, this book is relevant for readers interested in global labor history, human rights history and the history of democratization in Europe in the late twentieth century.

Historical Dictionary of Spain

Historical Dictionary of Spain PDF Author: Angel Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538108836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 832

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Book Description
Since Spain’s transition to democracy there has been rapid economic modernization, the establishment of a functioning liberal democracy, and a cultural renaissance. One area in which ordinary Spaniards have noted a massive change since the 1970s has been in the transformation of the road and rail networks, and also in local amenities—from sporting facilities to centers for the aged. Also impressive is the cleanliness of Spanish cities and the efforts put into town planning. And from the 1980s the country also built a successful public health system. As a result, for the first time since the 19th century Spaniards can largely look toward the West without any sense of inferiority (though, in recent years, confidence has been hit by the deep recession of 2008–2011 and the constant corruption scandals). This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Spain contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Spain.