Author: Angela B. Cornell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2022-01-20
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 1108879632
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →We are currently witnessing some of the greatest challenges to democratic regimes since the 1930s, with democratic institutions losing ground in numerous countries throughout the world. At the same time organized labor has been under assault worldwide, with steep declines in union density rates. In this timely handbook, scholars in law, political science, history, and sociology explore the role of organized labor and the working class in the historical construction of democracy. They analyze recent patterns of democratic erosion, examining its relationship to the political weakening of organized labor and, in several cases, the political alliances forged by workers in contexts of nationalist or populist political mobilization. The volume breaks new ground in providing cross-regional perspectives on labor and democracy in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Beyond academia, this volume is essential reading for policymakers and practitioners concerned with the relationship between labor and democracy.
Author: Mawere, Munyaradzi
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
Published: 2015-10-24
Total Pages: 422
ISBN-13: 9956763004
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.
Author: Godwin R. Murunga
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2007-02
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9781842778579
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Shows how the struggle for democracy has been waged in civil society, through opposition parties, and amongst traditionally marginalised groups like women and the young. This book also considers the remaining impediments to democratisation, in the form of a powerful police force and damaging structural adjustment policies.
Author: Gavin Williams
Publisher: HSRC Press
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 68
ISBN-13: 9780796920263
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Originally presented as a lecture, this occasional paper argues that definitions of democracy are incomplete and their meanings dependent on their historical context.
Author: John Ingleson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2022-02-28
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 0824893603
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Workers and Democracy is a study of worker activism and labor unions in the eight years between the recognition of Indonesian sovereignty by the Netherlands at the end of December 1949 and the nationalization of Dutch assets in December 1957. It contributes to a re-evaluation of the era of liberal parliamentary democracy in Indonesia. The focus is on the agency of workers and the structures, strategies and industrial campaigns of unions in the context of intense ideological conflict, competing union federations, the opposition of employers to collective action, and the efforts by the Indonesian state to manage industrial conflict. The imposition of martial law in March 1957 was the deathblow to parliamentary democracy and to the freedom of workers and unions to engage in collective action. It was not until Suharto’s ‘New Order’ regime collapsed in 1998 that Indonesian workers regained the freedom of association and the right to engage in collective action.
Author: Paul W. Posner
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2018-08-14
Total Pages: 275
ISBN-13: 1683400569
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In recent decades, Latin American countries have sought to modernize their labor market institutions to remain competitive in the face of increasing globalization. This book evaluates the impact of such neoliberal reforms on labor movements and workers’ rights in the region through comparative analyses of labor politics in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Using these five key cases, the authors assess the capacity of workers and working-class organizations to advance their demands and bring about a more just distribution of economic gains in an era in which capital has reasserted its power on a global scale. In particular, their findings challenge the purported benefits of labor market flexibility—the freedom of employers to adjust their workforces as needed—which has been touted as a way to reduce income inequality and unemployment. In-depth case studies show how flexibilization as well as privatization, trade liberalization, and economic deregulation have undermined organized labor in all of these countries, leading to the current internal fragmentation of unions and their inability to promote counterreforms or increase collective bargaining. This assessment concludes that even with substantial variation among countries in how reforms have been implemented, most workers in the region have experienced increasing precarity, informal employment, and weaker labor movements. This book provides vital insights into whether these movements have the potential to regain influence and represent working people’s interests effectively in the future.
Author: Stefano Bellucci
Publisher: James Currey
Published: 2019-05-17
Total Pages: 784
ISBN-13: 1847012183
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide.
Author: Adam Przeworski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1995-08-25
Total Pages: 162
ISBN-13: 9780521483759
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The joint report of twenty-one social scientists who collaborated over two years under the name of the Group on East-South Systems Transformations (ESST) identifies the principal political and economic choices confronting new democracies in Southern and Eastern Europe and South America.
Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-05-12
Total Pages: 269
ISBN-13: 1316239489
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.