Abstract
This paper notes that Charles Tilly’s “Globalization threatens labor’s rights” is distinguished by the author’s uncharacteristic pessimism concerning the continued salience of the national state and the domestic arena of contention, and the ability of ordinary people to resist large scale processes that threaten their rights. This study seeks to explain this paradox. It argues that a key commonality between “polity model Tilly,” “statist Tilly,” and the briefly appearing “globalization Tilly” is a fundamentally Weberian conception of governments, the state and the international state system which precludes the detection of key agents of capitalist regime change and world-scale ordering: party-governments and a hegemonic state. Political parties are critical agents of neo-liberal regime change, a process which involves a reformed or new party-government’s political and institutional decategorization of labor as an organized member of the polity, forcing labor to hat-switch to the category of citizen in order to survive the anti-labor order. Such a process is not new to the era of globalization: Hegemonic USA has promoted labor-decategorizing regimes of capitalism—whether the authoritarian or neo-liberal variant—since at least the end of WWII. Focussing on the historical push towards neo-liberalism in OECD, the paper argues that the hegemon’s neo-liberal, labor-decategoring projections have been limited by: a) the existence of a labor-related party in a party-government system; b) that labor-related party’s ability to capture government; and c) that same party’s maintenance of familial ties with organized labor. As such, neo-liberal regime change has not been invariant, nor has capitalist regime change been uni-directional towards the neo-liberal variety. Just as parties have been critical for labor’s decategorization, historically and today they are a key to labor’s struggle for recategorization.
I gratefully acknowledge comments by Michael Hanagan and Chris Tilly; Margaret Levi and Sydney University’s US Studies Centre for an office at which to complete this paper; and Richard Katz and Sidney Tarrow for their critiques of an earlier version.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abse, T. (1994). Italy: A new agenda. In P. Anderson & P. Camiller (Eds.), Mapping the West European left. London: Verso.
Arrighi, G., & Silver, B. J. (1999). Chaos and governance in the modern world system. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Castles, F. G., & Mitchell, D. (1993). Worlds of welfare and families of nations. In F. G. Castles (Ed.), Families of nations: Patterns of public policy in western democracies. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth Publishing Group.
Castles, F. G., & Wildenmann, R. (Eds.). (1986). Visions and realities of party government. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Coates, D. (Ed.). (2005). Varieties of capitalism, varieties of approaches. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cox, R.W. (1977). Labor and Hegemony. International Organization, 31(3).
Crouch, C., & Pizzorno, A. (Eds.). (1978a). The resurgence of class conflict in Western Europe since 1968 (Vol. I). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press (National Studies).
Crouch, C., & Pizzorno, A. (Eds.). (1978b). The resurgence of class conflict in Western Europe since 1968 (Vol. II). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press (Comparative Analyses).
Dombois, R., & Heseler, H. (Eds.). (2000). Seaports in the context of globalization and privatization. Maritime studies No. 1. Bremen, Germany: Universität Bremen.
Eisenberg, C. (1983). Working-class politics and the cold war: American Intervention in the German labor movement, 1945-49. Diplomatic History, 7(4), 283–306.
Eisenberg, C. (1996). Drawing the line: The American decision to divide Germany, 1944–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gentile, A. (2010). Historical Varieties of Labor Contention and Hegemony in Transnational Docker Campaigns. Doctoral dissertation submitted to the Johns Hopkins University.
Gentile, A., & Tarrow, S. (2009). Charles Tilly, globalization, and labor’s citizen rights. European Political Science Reivew, 1(3), 465–493.
Ginsborg, P. (1990). A history of contemporary Italy: Society and politics 1943-1988. London: Penguin Books.
Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. (Eds.). (2001). Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of comparative advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howell, C. (1999). Unforgiven: British trade unionism in crisis. In A. Martin, G. Ross, L. Baccaro, A. Daley, L. Fraile, C. Howell, R. M. Locke, R. Mahon, & S. J. Silvia (Eds.), The brave new world of European labor: European trade unions at the millennium. New York: Berghahn Books.
Huber, E., & Stephens, J. D. (2001). Development and crisis of the welfare state: Parties and policies in global markets. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Katz, R. S. (Ed.). (1987). Party governments: European and American experiences. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Katz, R. S., & Mair, P. (1995). Changing models of party organization and party democracy: the emergence of the cartel party. Party Politics, 1(1), 5–28.
Kimeldorf, H. (1999). Battling for American labor: Wobblies, craft workers, and the making of the union movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
LaFeber, W. (2008). America, Russia and the cold war 1945–2006. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing.
Lange, P., Ross, G., & Vannicelli, M. (1982). Unions, change, and crisis: French and Italian union strategy and the political economy, 1945-1980. London: George Allen & Unwin.
La Palombara, J. (1964). Interest groups in Italian politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lewis, H. (2004). Smoke, Mirrors and Spooks: The International Transport Workers’ Federation Vigilance Committees, 1949-1953 Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. 17.
Lipset, S. M., & Marks, G. (2001). It didn’t happen here: Why socialism failed in the United States. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Marks, G. (1989). Unions in politics: Britain, Germany, and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McAdam, D., Tarrow, S., & Tilly, C. (2001). Dynamics of contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Müller-Jentsch, W. (1995). Germany: From collective voice to co-management. In J. Rogers & W. Streeck (Eds.), Works councils: Consultation, representation, and cooperation in industrial relations. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Müller-Jentsch, W., & Sperling, H.-J. (1978). Economic development, labour conflicts and the industrial relations system in West Germany. In C. Crouch & A. Pizzorno (Eds.), The resurgence of class conflict in Western Europe since 1968 (Vol. I). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press (National Studies).
Pontusson, J. (2005). Inequality and prosperity: Social Europe versus Liberal America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Regalia, I., Regini, M., & Reyneri, E. (1978). Labour conflicts and industrial relations in Italy. In C. Colin & P. Alessandro (Eds.), The resurgence of class conflict in Western Europe since 1968 (Vol. I). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. National Studies.
Rhodes, M. (2001). The political economy of social pacts: ‘Competitive Corporatism’ and European welfare state reform. In P. Pierson (Ed.), The new politics of the welfare state. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salvati, M. (1972). The Impasse of Italian Capitalism. New Left Review, 76 Nov.–Dec.
Soskice, D. (1999). Divergent production regimes: Coordinated and uncoordinated market economies in the 1980s and 1990s. In H. Kitschelt, P. Lange, G. Marks, & J. D. Stephens (Eds.), Continuity and change in contemporary capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tarrow, S. (1989). Democracy and disorder: Protest and politics in Italy 1965-1975. Oxford: Clarendon.
Tilly, C. (1995). Globalization threatens labor’s rights. International Labor and Working-Class History, 47, 1–23.
Traxler, F. (1995). Farewell to labour market associations? Organized versus disorganized decentralization as a map of industrial relations. In C. Crouch & F. Traxler (Eds.), Organized industrial relations in Europe: What future? Aldershot: Avebury.
Trinca, H., & Davies, A. (2000). Waterfront: The battle that changed Australia. Milsons Point, NSW, Australia: Doubleday.
Turnbull, P., Woolfson, C., & Kelly, J. E. (1992). Dock strike: Conflict and restructuring in Britain’s ports. Aldershot: Avebury.
Turner, L., Katz, H. C., & Hurd, R. (Eds.). (2001). Rekindling the movement: Labor’s quest for relevance in the twenty-first century. Ithaca and London: ILR Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gentile, A. (2011). Party governments, US hegemony, & a tale of two Tillys’ Weberian state. In: Hanagan, M., Tilly, C. (eds) Contention and Trust in Cities and States. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0756-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0756-6_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0755-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0756-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)