Frustrated Demand for Unionisation: the Case of the United States and Canada Revisited

In this paper we demonstrate that there is a substantial union representation gap in the United States. We arrive at this conclusion by comparing Canadian and American worker responses to questions relating to desired union representation. We find that a majority of the gap in union density between Canada and the US is a function of greater frustrated demand on the part of American workers. We then estimate potential union density rates for the United States and Canada and find that, given current levels of union membership in both countries, if effective demand for unionisation among non-union workers were realised, then this would imply equivalently higher rates of unionisation (37 and 36 percent in the US and Canada respectively). These results cast some doubt on the view that even minor reforms to labour legislation in the US, to bring them in line with those in most Canadian jurisdictions, would do nothing to improve the rate of organising success in the United States. The results also have implications for countries such as Britain who have recently moved closer to a Wagner-Act model of statutory recognition.Frustrated Demand for Unionisation: the Case of the United States and Canada Revisited

Robert Michels, demokrasi ve oligarşinin tunç kanunu

The article below is the Turkish translation of the INTRODUCTION which Seymour Martin Lipset had written in 1961 for the famous work of Robert Michels titled Political Parties. Based on his observations in Europe and his keen analyses,Michels believed that the majority rule which should reign in democratic organizations like political parties, unions and cooperatives inevitably turns into minority rule and single- leader domination for various reasons.. This in-built tendency notwithstanding, both thinkers, and Lipset in particular, insist on expending constant efforts in order to approach the democratic ideals to the extent possible, as every divergence from democracy in the internal administration of such organizations is apt to engender adverse effects for the governance of the society or the labor movement.Publisher's Versio

From abundance to scarcity: implications for the American tradition

(print) 108 p. ; 21 cmBoulding, K. E. The limits to progress in evolutionary systems.--Kammen, M. From scarcity to abundance--to scarcity?--Lipset, S. M. Growth, affluence, and the limits of futurolog

Dimensionality, ideology and party positions towards European integration

<p>The rise of political contestation over European integration has led many scholars to examine the role that broader ideological positions play in structuring party attitudes towards European integration. This article extends the existing approaches in two important ways. First, it shows that whether the dimensionality of politics is imagined in a one-dimensional ‘general left‒right’ form or a two-dimensional ‘economic left‒right/social liberal-conservative’ form leads to very different understandings of the way ideology has structured attitudes towards European integration, with the two-dimensional approach offering greater explanatory power. Second, existing approaches have modelled the influence of ideology on attitudes towards European integration as a static process. This article shows that the relationship between ideology and European integration has changed substantially over the history of European integration: divisions over social issues have replaced economic concerns as the main driver of party attitudes towards European integration.</p

How does democracy influence citizens' perceptions of government corruption? A cross-national study

We examine the effect of democracy as an institutional context on individuals’ perceptions of government corruption. To do so, we compile an integrated dataset from the Asian, Afro, and Latino Barometer Surveys and use a hierarchical linear regression model. Our primary finding is that the effect of democracy has different effects on ordinary citizens’ perceptions of corruption in different contexts. In general, people in countries with higher levels of democracy tend to perceive their governments to be more corrupt. However, more importantly, conditional models show that in countries with more developed democratic institutions, individuals with stronger democratic values are less likely to perceive the government to be corrupt. Moreover, people in such countries are less likely to assess their government based on their perceptions of economic situation

The behaviour of political parties and MPs in the parliaments of the Weimar Republic

Copyright @ 2012 The Authors. This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below.Analysing the roll-call votes of the MPs of the Weimar Republic we find: (1) that party competition in the Weimar parliaments can be structured along two dimensions: an economic left–right and a pro-/anti-democratic. Remarkably, this is stable throughout the entire lifespan of the Republic and not just in the later years and despite the varying content of votes across the lifespan of the Republic, and (2) that nearly all parties were troubled by intra-party divisions, though, in particular, the national socialists and communists became homogeneous in the final years of the Republic.Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstan