Gubernatorial Power and the Nationalization of State Politics

Reviewing Saladin M. Ambar, How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency (2012) and Thad Kousser & Justin H. Phillips, The Power of American Governors: Winning on Budgets and Losing on Policy

The Links Between Collective Bargaining and Equaliy

Working paper by Adelle Blackett and Colleen Sheppard, prepared for the ILO, analyzes the links between collective bargaining and equaliy at international level and addresses the efforts to monitor and regulate the right of association and collective bargaining

Institutional theory and legislatures

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioral and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen, institutional analysis has developed into an important alternative to more individualistic approaches to theory and analysis. This body of theory has developed in a number of ways, and perhaps the most commonly applied version in political science is historical institutionalism that stresses the importance of path dependency in shaping institutional behaviour. The fundamental question addressed in this book is whether institutionalism is useful for the various sub-disciplines within political science to which it has been applied, and to what extent the assumptions inherent to institutional analysis can be useful for understanding the range of behavior of individuals and structures in the public sector. The volume will also examine the relative utility of different forms of institutionalism within the various sub-disciplines. The book consists of a set of strong essays by noted international scholars from a range of sub-disciplines within the field of political science, each analyzing their area of research from an institutionalist perspective and assessing what contributions this form of theorizing has made, and can make, to that research. The result is a balanced and nuanced account of the role of institutions in contemporary political science, and a set of suggestions for the further development of institutional theory

The logic of the CAP: Politics or Economics?

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Transforming New Zealand Employment Relations: At the Intersection of Institutional Dispute Resolution and Workplace Conflict Management

In New Zealand, the contemporary shift from highly regulated, collectivist employment rights to individual employment relationships included statutory direction to mediation. Good faith negotiation in the workplace and state provision of mediation were to be the primary mechanisms for resolution of ‘employment relationship problems’ (ERP). This paper investigates the intersection between workplace conflict management and institutional provision of mediation. We investigated ERP resolution by drawing on empirical evidence from 38 narrative interviews where participants recounted experiences of employment relationship problem (ERP) resolution. We analysed 243 ERP by comparing settlements to end employment relationships with resolution of ERP where relationships endured. We sought to understand why some ERP remained unresolved and/or escalated. We found that collaborative reflective sense-making had a positive impact on early workplace problem resolution while investigation and confidential settlement negotiations risked injustice. We present, therefore, some suggestions for embedding collaborative conflict management in the workplace

Determinants of agricultural protection from an international perspective: The role of political institutions

"This paper explores the role of political institutions in determining the ability of agriculture to avoid taxation in developing countries or attract government transfers in industrialized countries. The utilized model is based on a probabilistic voting environment, wherein rural districts are less ideologically committed than urban districts in industrialized countries, and the reverse is true in developing countries. As a consequence, in industrialized (developing) countries rural (urban) districts are pivotal in determining the coalition that obtains a majority, whereas urban (rural) districts are pivotal within the majority itself. In bargaining at the level of the legislature, this generates a conflict between a government that tends to favor rural (urban) districts, and a parliamentary majority that is dominated by urban (rural) concerns. As district size grows and the electoral system converges to a purely proportional system, both of these biases are attenuated. Overall, we see opposing nonlinear relationships between district size and agricultural subsidies on the one hand and district size and taxation on the other. In developing countries, taxation of agriculture first increases and then decreases with district magnitude; in industrialized countries, agricultural subsidization first increases and then decreases with district magnitude. Moreover, the impact of district magnitude on the level of agricultural subsidization is attenuated in presidential versus parliamentary systems, while the level of agricultural taxation is amplified in presidential systems. In the present paper, these findings are first theorized and then empirically confirmed by a cross-country analysis of data from 37 countries over a 20-year period." from authors' abstractpolitical economy of agricultural protectionism, Agricultural policies, Urban-rural differences, political institutions,

Fathers and work-life balance in France and the UK : policy and practice

Purpose – This paper focuses on the role of organizations in mediating the impact of national work-life balance (WLB) policy on employees, in particular fathers. Design/methodology/approach – It presents existing research about WLB policy implementation in organizations as well as the findings of empirical work in insurance and social work in France and the UK (questionnaire survey, case study analysis, interviews with national and sector-level trade union officials). Findings & Practical implications – These indicate that fathers’ take-up of WLB policies is the outcome of a complex dynamic between national fatherhood regimes, organizational and sector characteristics and the individual employee. They suggest that fathers tend to use WLB measures to spend time with their families where measures increase their sense of entitlement (state policies of paternity leave) or where measures offer non-gendered flexibility (reduced working time/organizational systems of flexi-time). In line with other studies it also finds that fathers extensively use informal flexibility where this is available (individual agency). These findings have implications for way WLB policies are framed at national and organizational level. Originality/value - Cross-national comparative research into WLB policy and practice at national and organizational level is very rare. The empirical work presented in this article, although exploratory, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of WLB policy and practice, particularly as it relates to fathers

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Social Dialogue Articulation in Europe (EESDA) Project No. VS/2017/0434 Social Dialogue Articulation and Effectiveness: Country Report for France

This report presents a country study analysing the articulation and effectiveness of social dialogue in France. The methodological approach relies on desk research and semi-structured interviews with social partners in France, aiming at obtaining deeper insights into how issues are articulated in French social dialogue, actors are interacting, and how social dialogue outcomes are achieved – and ultimately implemented. Following a brief historical background on the industrial relations system and the evolutions in the French context after a series of reforms, the report then provides both a cross-sectoral overview of social dialogue articulation and the interaction with European-level social dialogue. It also offers a sectoral perspective by looking at four sectors with a particular focus on four occupations within these sectors: commerce (sales agents), construction (construction workers), education (teachers) and healthcare (nurses). The research suggests a diversity of experiences both in cross-sectoral and sectoral social dialogue articulation and their effectiveness depending on the type of actor (e.g. trade unions, employer organisations, etc.) and on the sector of focus. The perceptions of social dialogue effectiveness are mixed in the face of continuous reforms over the last decades. Interactions with European-level social dialogue and social partners is considered as important (particularly in some sectors), but the intensity of the interaction is limited when it comes to involvement in the European Semester process

Proposal Rights and Political Power

In a canonical model of sequential collective bargaining over a divisible good we show that equilibrium expected payoffs are not restricted by players’ voting rights or their impatience. For all monotonic voting rules and discount factors, and for all divisions of the good among players, there exists a stationary proposal-making rule such that this division represents players’ expected payoffs in a Stationary Subgame Perfect Nash equilibrium in pure strategies. The result attests to the significance of proposal rights in determining political power in collective deliberations.Power, Proposal Rights, Voting Rights.