Book review of Andrew Battista, The Revival of Labor Liberalism. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008. $45.00 hardcover

Nackerud, Larry

English

ScholarWorks at WMU

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare Volume 36 Issue 3 September Article 13 2009 Review of The Revival of Labor Liberalism. Andrew Battista. Reviewed by Larry Nackerud. Larry Nackerud University of Georgia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw  Part of the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Nackerud, Larry (2009) "Review of The Revival of Labor Liberalism. Andrew Battista. Reviewed by Larry Nackerud.," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 36 : Iss. 3 , Article 13. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol36/iss3/13 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Social Work at ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu. 206 Journal of Sociology & Social Welfarethe United Kingdom.In Part III, Robert Chaskin extracts the lessons and keythemes suggested by the six case studies and assess theiroverall contributions to theory and practice. The final chapteris written by both editors, and provides a framework for inte-grating future research, policy, and practice to more effectivelyfuse these often distinct "communities" with the purpose of fa-cilitating action at both the organizational and systems levels.The editors reject the notion that the relationship between ex-planation (research) and change (action) is intrinsically dichoto-mous and instead argue that fostering a dialectical relationshipamong researchers, policymakers, managers, and practitionerscan lead to inventive approaches to action and generate newquestions and inquiry. While the editors acknowledge the com-plexities of cultivating interactions between diverse stakehold-ers with varying degrees of power, they view this as an op-portunity to build relationships centered on shared core valuessuch as the desire to improve the well-being of children andyoung people as illustrated in the six case studies.The volume was ambitious in its scope and the case studiespresented provide varying levels of usefulness for the intend-ed audience of researchers, policymakers, practitioners, andadvocates. The text is very relevant to child welfare research-ers and policy students. The cross-cutting themes and lessonsand the analysis of researcher roles, relationships, and engage-ment styles are valuable contributions to the research on cross-sectoral governance, which has up to this point largely ignoredchild welfare policy as a focus. The questions raised in thebook's introduction are also useful for guiding students in ana-lyzing case studies generally, not only those included here.Ann Reyes Robbins, University of Southern CaliforniaAndrew Battista, The Revival of Labor Liberalism. Champaign,IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008. $45.00 hardcover.In this book, Andrew Battista situates himself nicely ina long-standing academic dialogue. He makes four centralclaims in the book. One, the rise of unions and labor shapedthe American political and social landscape. Second, theBook Reviewslabor-liberal alliance faded in the late 1960's and thereafter.Third, a slight resurgence of the labor-liberal alliance occurredin the last two decades. Fourth, he claims that an understand-ing of both the tension within the labor-liberal alliance in itsmodem structure and the tension between the labor-liberal al-liance and the business-conservative alliance are essential forunderstanding present day American politics and society. Theoverarching argument put forth by Battista, and certainly oneto engender further academic dialogue, is the belief that theongoing decline of union density and fragmentation of liberal-ism must be abated if the labor-liberal coalition is ever to befully restored.Battista organizes his arguments within the three parts. InPart I, he deals with the rise and decline of the Labor-LiberalCoalition and includes a presentation of theoretical and his-torical background. In Part II, he provides case studies onthe revival of the coalition and includes detailed case studiesof the political organizations of the dissident unions such asthe Progressive Alliance, Citizen Labor Energy Coalition andNational Labor Committee).He also offers a careful analysis ofthe wings of the labor movement and dissident labor organi-zations such as the Democratic Agenda, trhe Economic PolicyInstitute and Jobs with Justice). Part III presents the conclu-sions and arguments about the central and interrelated uses ofthe book and speculates in future trends.. The book has several strengths. One major strength is theinclusion of a myriad of stated details, nuances, and futurepossibilities of the tension between the labor-liberal allianceand the business-conservative alliance. An additional strengthis the author's historical understanding relayed to the readerof the political meanderings of the country since the decade ofthe 1960's. Another strength is the immediate applicability ofthe book and its contents to the policy and financial woes of thecountry in 2008. Battista convincingly discusses the relation-ship of the "regulatory state" with labor liberalism, but alsofine-tunes the claim by describing fully the three traditions ofliberalism and how they differ in their political strategies.A weakness of the book is the assumed advanced expertiseof the readers. The book is clearly not for the faint of heart.While Battista is digging deeply into an understanding of the208 Journal of Sociology & Social Welfarerise and fall of the labor-liberal coalition, he clearly antici-pates an audience of readers with a solid foundation in politi-cal science, labor economics, and public policy. Academiciansand advanced graduate students are the groups that come tomind. While I recommend the book -certainly anyone wholived through the last four or five decades and possesses ascholarly interest in American politics will find themselves in-formed-the aforementioned foundation of knowledge will becritical to partaking of the book and concluding that it was a"good read."Larry Nackerud, University of GeorgiaAmilcar Moreira, The Activation Dilemma: Reconciling theFairness and Effectiveness of Minimum Income Schemes inEurope. Bristol: Policy Press, 2008. $110.00 hardcover.Although the task of providing income support duringtimes of hardship has traditionally been carried out by reli-gious and charitable bodies, governments have become in-creasingly involved. The poor relief programs establishedby the municipal authorities in Northern Europe in the latemedieval period were subsequently augmented by nationalprograms such as the Elizabethan Poor Law in England. Thisstatute formed the basis for many subsequent programs de-signed to provide a modicum of support to the poor and desti-tute. By the 2 0 th century, these programs had become common-place even though there were periods of retrenchment whenbenefits were restricted as well as periods of relative generos-ity when social assistance was more widely used.The issues of equity and effectiveness have often beeninvoked by both the opponents and supporters of social assis-tance or "minimum income schemes" as the author of this in-teresting book, calls them. He points out that arguments aboutthe alleged ineffectiveness of these programs and claims thatthey unfairly target benefits on indolent, undeserving claim-ants have been frequently invoked in recent years, and in somecountries have legitimated the curtailment of these programs.On the other hand, social assistance has also been denounced

Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Revival of Labor Liberalism.\u3c/em\u3e Andrew Battista. Reviewed by Larry Nackerud.

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3459&amp;context=jssw

Review of \u3cem\u3eThe Revival of Labor Liberalism.\u3c/em\u3e Andrew Battista. Reviewed by Larry Nackerud.

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ScholarWorks at WMU