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Trade Unions and Political Parties in Britain, France, Italy and West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1978

David Coombes
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Extract

The object in trying to compare the relationship between trade unions and working-class political parties in these four countries was to see how far the relationship had changed in response to certain trends supposed to be common to the countries concerned. The trends were: (i) the changing role of working-class parties themselves; (ii) the decline of political representation, especially by parliamentary means, in favour of direct action; (iii) the growth of government in the social and economic sphere and increasing direct participation by trade unions in governmental decision-making. It was considered important to look at these countries together in view of their growing economic and political interdependence, in spite of fundamental differences among them which affect the roles both of political parties and of trade unions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 485 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

1 Cawson, Alan, ‘Pluralism, Corporatism and the Role of the State’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1978, pp. 187–99Google Scholar.

2 For example, Ionescu, Ghiţa, Centripetal Politics, Hart-Davis, , MacGibbon, London, 1975 Google Scholar, and the various articles cited by Cawson, op. cit.

3 For example, Epstein, E. M., The Corporation in American Politics, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969 Google Scholar; E. S. Mason, The Corporation in Modern Society, i960; and most recently, Lindblom, C. E., Politics and Markets, Basic Books, New York, 1977 Google Scholar. McConnell, Grant, however, in Private Power and American Democracy, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1966 Google Scholar, includes trade unions.

4 See especially J. E. S.\Hayward, & Watson, M. (eds.), Planning, Politics and Public Policy: the British, French and Italian experience London, 1975 Google Scholar.

5 See Crozier, Michel et al, The Crisis of Democracy, New York University Press, 1975, p. 29 Google Scholar.

6 See in particular SirParker, Peter, A New Industrial Polity, Stamp Memorial Lecture, 1977, University of London Google Scholar.