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The Siamese Twins: Citizenship Rights, Cleavage Formation, and Party-Union Relations in Western Europe*

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Prophecies of doom for both working-class party and labor unions have gained popularity in the Western industrial democracies over the last two decades. The “old” Siamese twins, working-class party and labor unions, have a century-long history of their combined struggle to achieve political and industrial citizenship rights for the working class. Both forms of interest representation are seen as facing new challenges if not a crisis due to internal and external changes of both long-term and recent nature. However, despite these prophecies political parties and union movemehts have been differently affected and have responded in dissimilar ways across Western Europe. The Siamese twins, party and unions, as social institutions, their embeddedness in the social structure, and their linkages, were molded at an earlier time with long-term consequences. Hence, we cannot grasp today's political unionism, party-union relations and organized labor's capacity for change, if we do not understand the social and political conditions under which the organization of labor interests became institutionalized. An understanding of the origins and causes of union diversity helps us to view the variations in union responses to current challenges.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1995

References

1 I use throughout this paper the term party in singular and unions in plural to indicate that the latter is commonly a set of multiple actors, in particular national unions that usually cooperate within a peak association.

2 The image of the “Siamese twins” is borrowed from Viktor Adler (1852–1918), founder and leader of the Austrian Social-Democratic Workers Party (1889).

3 On the crisis of socialism see the recent readers:Lemke, Christiane and Marks, Gary (eds), The Crisis of Socialism in Europe (Durham, NC, 1992)Google Scholar; Paterson, William E. and, Thomas, Alastair H. (eds), The Future of Social Democracy: Problems and Prospects of Social Democratic Parties in Western Europe (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Piven, Frances Fox (ed.) Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies (New York, 1991)Google Scholar. On party-union relations see Taylor, Andrew J., Trade Unions and Politics: A Comparative Introduction (London, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Trade Unions and the Politics of Social Democratic Renewal”, West European Politics, 16 (1993), pp. 133–155.

4 Zolberg, Aristide R., “How Many Exceptionalisms?”, in Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristidc R. (eds), Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986), pp. 397455Google Scholar.

5 See the seminal contribution by Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction”, in Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein (eds). Party Systems and Voter Alignments, Cross-National Perspectives (New York, 1967), pp. 164Google Scholar; and also Rokkan, Stein, “Nation-Building, Cleavage Formation and the Structuring of Mass Politics”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10 (1968), pp. 173210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; both articles are merged in Rokkan, Stein et al. , Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Process of Development (Oslo, 1970), ch. 3Google Scholar.

6 I use throughout the paper the term “union center” to denote various forms of peak associations of labor unions, such as union commissions, congresses, central organizations, or confederations (or federations, in American usage), with varying degrees of centralization and power.

7 For an excellent historical comparison of selected sector unions see Marks, Gary, Unions in Politics: Britain, Germany, and the United States in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 The freezing hypothesis postulated that “the party systems of the 1960's reflect, with few but significant exceptions, the cleavage structures of the 1920's [ital. in orig.]”: Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures”, p. 50.

13 See, for a recent approach in organizational sociology and application to American labor unions, Hannan, Michael T. and Freeman, John, Organizational Ecology (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar.

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17 The argument connects with the insights from institutional economics and rational choice theory. The trajectories of organizational adaptations are path-dependent, see – most prominently – North, Douglas C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; they are limited by the institutionalized structures, the established vested interests, the past mobilization of cleavages, and the interplay of existing organizations. Seen in the perspective of rational choice, strategic decisions follow a “nested game”, they are not necessarily the most optimal rational strategy of adaptation but are the result of a sequence of decisions. See especially Tsebelis, George, Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar; for an application to left-wing parties see Koelble, Thomas A., “Recasting Social Democracy in Europe: A Nested Games Explanation of Strategic Adjustment in Political Parties”, Politics and Society, 20 (1992), pp. 5170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 I shall attempt to extend the insights from the literature on verzuiling (pillarization), to a general theory of cleavage persistence, following Rokkan, “Verzuiling”; cf. especially Lehmbruch, Gerhard, Proporzdemokratie: Politisches System und politische Kultur in der Schweiz und in Österreich (Tübingen, 1967)Google Scholar; Lijphart, Arend, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley, 1968)Google Scholar; and Lorwin, Val R., “Segmented Pluralism: Ideological Cleavages and Political Cohesion in the Smaller European Democracies”, Comparative Politics, 3 (1971), pp. 141175CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for historical comparison of Catholic and Socialist pillars see Hellemans, Staf, Strijd om de moderniteit: Sociale bewegingen en verzuiling in Europa sinds 1800 (Leuven, 1990)Google Scholar.

19 Although there are a number of other, minor currents in Western European labor movements, the three cleavage “families” are the most important; see for a detailed analysis Ebbinghaus, Bernhard, Labour Unity in Union Diversity: Trade Unions and Social Cleavages in Western Europe, 1890–1989 (Ph.D., European University Institute, Florence, 1993)Google Scholar, chs 3–5 and (on the salience of cleavages) ch. 9.

20 The approach taken here departs from the instructive cleavage analysis of Bartolini, Stefano, “I primi movimenti socialisti in Europa: Consolidamento organizzativo e mobilitazione politica”, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politico, 23 (1993), pp. 217281Google Scholar; and also Bartolini, Stefano and Mair, Peter, Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: The Stabilization of European Electorates 1885–1985 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar. The two studies look mainly at the “left” bloc, and less at the intra-class fragmentation of labor, as initially, inherent in Rokkan's multi-dimensional cleavage analysis.

21 These countries are (and are abbreviated in tables as follows) AU (Austria), BE (Belgium), DE (Denmark), FR (France), GE (Germany), IR (Ireland), IT (Italy), NE (the Netherlands), NO (Norway), SW (Sweden), SZ (Switzerland), UK (United Kingdom); the major omissions being Finland, Spain and Portugal, all latter three countries with important syndicalist-Communist traditions, and with longer authoritarian regimes.

22 See Ebbinghaus, Bernhard, “From Ideology to Organization”, in Pasture, Patrick and Verberckmoes, Johan (eds), The Lost Perspective? Ideology and Trade Unions in Europe (Aldershot, forthcoming 1995)Google Scholar.

23 My analysis follows Rokkan's call for a parallel study of political parties and labor unions: “In fact in one of my early articles on Norwegian developments I called for the analysis of the parallels and the interactions between two sets of organization-building efforts: the structuring of alternatives in what I called the ‘numerical democracy’ channel and the building of effective units of action in the corporate bargaining channel. […] A full-fledged model would have to generate hypotheses not only about the emergence of alternatives in the electoral channel but also about the structuring of mass organizations in the corporate channels and about types of interlinkages between the units in the two arenas [ital. in orig.].” Rokkan “Verzuiling”, p. 563; also Rokkan, Stein, “Norway: Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism”, in Dahl, Robert A. (ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven, 1966), pp. 70115Google Scholar.

24 See Crouch, Colin, Industrial Relations and European State Traditions (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar, chs 9 and 10.

25 See Rokkan, “Nation-Building”; Eliassen, Kjell A., “Politische Beteiligung und parteipolitische Bindung der Gewerkschaften in Westeuropa: ein Überblick”, Soziale Welt, 25 (1974), pp. 7190Google Scholar; Lafferty, William M., Economic Development and the Response of Labor in Scandinvia: A Multi-Level Analysis (Oslo, 1971)Google Scholar; and Lipset, Seymour Martin, “Radicalism or Reformism: The Sources of Working-class Politics”, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), pp. 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Lipset, “Radicalism or Reformism”, p. 6.

27 On integration into the welfare state see Flora, Peter, “Introduction”, in Flora, Peter (ed., Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States Since World War II (Berlin, 1986), vol. I, pp. 1136Google Scholar.

28 For an elite strategy perspective and critical appraisals of Marshall, “Citizenship”, see especially Giddens, Anthony, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge, 1985Google Scholar; Mann, Michael, “Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship”, Sociology, 21 (1987), pp. 339354CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Sources of Social Power: Vol. II, The Rise of Classes and Nation-states, 1760–1914 (Oxford, 1993). Marshall's citizenship rights and Rokkan's threshold model have an evolutionary bias as they tend to generalize from the British case. As Giddens and Mann point out, citizenship rights have not come “naturally” but were achieved by political struggle, albeit only partly by class struggle.

29 See the classical statement by Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, 1959), p. 183Google Scholar; and for mobilization theory, see especially Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, 1978)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

30 I will not discuss explanations for the varying elite strategies, nor their impact, on the development or stability of mass democracies, as this has been the subject of an extended debate in political sociology. Beside the above cited work of Rokkan, Lipset and Mann, see Bendix, Reinhard, Nation-Building and Citizenship, (new ed., Berkeley, 1977; 1st pub. 1964)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Luebbert, Gregory M., Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Stephens, John' D., “Democratic Transition and Breakdown in Europe, 1870–1939: A Test of the Moore Thesis”, American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1989), pp. 10191077CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Therbora, Göran, “The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy”, New Left Review, 103 (1977), pp. 341Google Scholar.

31 Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties, p. 79.

32 Ebbinghaus, Labour Unity, ch. 2.

33 Few studies have systematically analyzed the variations in industrial relations. For an account of the transition to industrial democracy, see Sorge, Arndt, “The Evolution of Industrial Democracy in the Countries of the European Community”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 14 (1976), pp. 274294CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a recent study on state-society relations, see Crouch, Industrial Relations; and for informative overviews on state intervention in industrial relations, see Armingeon, Klaus, Staat und Arbeitsbeziehungen: Ein internationaler Vergleich (Opladen, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hepple, Bob (ed.), The Making of Labour Law in Europe: A Comparative Study of Nine Countries up to 1945 (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

34 Note that these processes were often long enduring, far from clear-cut, and even sometimes reversed. Moreover, these rights were only rarely explicitly and fully guaranteed, their practical value depends on juridical application, administrative practice, and other facilitating circumstances. How precarious these rights were, was shown more than once when, authoritarian regimes repealed fundamental rights with one stroke.

35 See Crouch, Industrial Relations, p. 320.

36 Th e suffrage extension has been the subject of many comparative studies on the mass democracies, often leading to different evaluations depending on the definition of democracy, cf., for example, the diverging classification of the United States of America by Lipset, “Reformism or Radicalism”, and Therborn, “Rule of Capital”, as early and late introducers of universal suffrage respectively; for a valuable historical overview see Kohl, Jürgen, “Zur langfristigen Entwicklung der politischen Partizipation in Westeuropa”, in Steinbach, P. (ed.), Probleme politischer Partizipation im Modernisierungsprozeβ (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 473503Google Scholar.

37 Lipset and Rokkan postulate “the rule that the parties which were able to establish mass organizations and entrench themselves in the local government structures before the final drive toward maximal mobilization have proved the most viable”: “Cleavage Structures”, p. 51.

38 Tilly, Charles, “Globalization Threatens Labor's Rights”, International Labor and Working-class History, 47 (1995), pp. 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Przeworski, Adam and Sprague, John, Paper Stones. A History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago, 1988; 1st pub. 1986)Google Scholar.

40 For a historical comparison of British and Swedish organized interests see Fulcher, James, “On the Explanation of Industrial Relations Diversity: Labour Movements, Employers and the State in Britain and Sweden”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 26 (1988), pp. 246274CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Armingeon, Staat und Arbeitsbeziehungen.

42 See Briefs, Götz, “Gewerkschaften”, in Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften, vol. 4 (Tübingen, 1965), pp. 545561Google Scholar.

43 See Crouch, Industrial Relations; and Sorge, “Evolution of Industrial Democracy”.

44 See Lorwin, “Segmented Pluralism”.

45 See Taylor, Trade Unions and Polities; and Przeworski and Sprague, Paper Stones'.

46 SeeScharpf, Fritz, Sozialdemokratische Krisenpolitik in Europa (Frankfurt, 1987)Google Scholar.

47 On “deviant” organizations see Nedelmann, Birgitta, “Handlungsraum politischer Organ-isationen”, Sozialwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch für Politik, 4 (1974), pp. 9118Google Scholar; and on the role of “political inventors”, Stinchcombe, “Social Structure and Organizations”.

48 Duverger, Maurice, Les partis potitiques (Paris, 1953)Google Scholar.

49 According to Duverger, externally founded organizations tend to be more centralized, they are formed top-down, thus with more hierarchical discipline, and the center assumes primary authority. In contrast, the loose electoral alliances or parliamentary groupings tend to be more decentralized; they have been formed bottom-up, and the local structures largely maintain their autonomy: see Duverger, Les partis politiques. Although they have often been historically coexistent, one should separate the dimension of legitimation from the degree of organizational consolidation (or centralization).

50 Panebianco, Angelo, Political Parties, Organization and Power (Cambridge, 1988); cf.Google ScholarEliassen, Kjell A. and Svaasand, Lars, “The Formation of Mass Political Organizations: An Analytical Framework”, Scandinavian Political Studies, 10 (1975), pp. 95120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 For instance, the internally legitimated British TUC has been much less centralized than the party-led Swedish LO that was formed on the initiative and with the ideological assistance of the Socialist party: see Fulcher, James, Labour Movements, Employers, and the State: Conflict and Co-operation in Britain and Sweden (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar.

52 See recently Kitschelt, Herbert, The Transformation of European Social Democracy (New York, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Koelble, “Recasting Social Democracy”.

53 One encounters practical problems in accounting for internal organizational variations, if one does not choose a case study analysis (for example, see Marks, Unions in Politics) that highlights diverse cases but cannot map the general pattern. Moreover, only a few comparative organizational indicators and little systematic information are available to test this hypothesis; for an exception see Visser, Jelle, In Search of Inclusive Unionism (Deventer, 1990)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

54 “Conflicts in the labor market, by contrast [to other cleavages], proved much more uniformly divisive: all countries of Western Europe developed lower-class mass parties at some point or other before World War One.” Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures”, p. 35.

55 See the parallel argument to the Lipset and Rokkan thesis on party systems for labor unions by Ebbinghaus, Bernhard and Visser, Jelle, “Where Doe s Union Diversity Come From?”, XIIth World Congress of Sociology (Madrid, 07 1990)Google Scholar.

56 Lane, Jan-Erik and Ersson, Savante O., Politics and Society in Western Europe, 2nd. ed. (London, 1991)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

57 Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties; cf. Ebbinghaus, Labour Unity.

58 Flora, “Introduction”.

59 Przeworski and Sprague, Paper Stones, pp. 25–28.

60 In the following the term Socialist party and Socialist union movement is used as a general term for non-Communist working-class parties and union movements, though in some cases the terms Social-Democratic party, Labor party or Free union movement are more appropriate. This is not to claim that all these working-class parties (or unions) are ideologically or sociologically similar, quite the contrary.

61 See Fulcher, “Industrial Relations Diversity”; and Labour Movements, Employers, and the State, ch. 3.

62 On Socialist union confederations see Galenson, Walter (ed.), Comparative Labor Movements (New York, 1968; 1st pub. 1952)Google Scholar; Geary, Dick (ed.), Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe before 1914 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Kendall, Walter, The Labour Movement in Europe (London, 1975)Google Scholar; van der Linden, Marcel and Rojahn, Jürgen (eds), The Formation of Labour Movements 1870–1914, 2 vols (Leiden, 1990)Google Scholar; and Visser, Inclusive Unionism. On Socialist parties see Paterson, William E. and Thomas, Alastair H. (eds), Social Democratic Parties in Western Europe (London, 1977)Google Scholar; and “Future of Social Democracy”.

63 In Belgium several general strikes for suffrage reform were called out after the “black year” of 1886, albeit with limited immediate success, universal but unequal (plural voting) manhood suffrage was granted in 1898. In Sweden, the general strike of 1902 failed as well and manhood suffrage was extended only in 1909. The German debate over the general strike was about the submission of labor unions to the political, electoral strategy of the Social-Democratic party. Parallel to the manhood suffrage for the relative powerless Imperial diet since 1871, a three-class election system was applied in Prussia until 1918.

64 Rose, Richard and Urwin, Derek, “Social Cohesion, Political Parties and Strains in Regimes”, Comparative Political Studies, 2 (1969), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Martin, David, A General Theory of Secularization (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar.

66 Madeley, John T.S., “Politics and Religion in Western Europe”, in Moyser, G. (ed.), Politics and Religion in the Modern World (London, 1991), pp. 2866Google Scholar.

67 For consociational accommodation see Lehmbruch, Proporzdemokratie; Lijphart, Politics of Accommodation; and Lorwin, “Segmented Pluralism”; for the “religious base” of variations in organized interests see Crouch, Industrial Relations, ch. 9.

68 Lipset, and Rokkan, , “Cleavage Structures”, p. 15; cf. Swaan, Abram de, In the Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 8387Google Scholar.

69 Lipset and Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures”, p. 15.

70 Cf. Hellemans, Strijd om de moderniteit.

71 On Christian union movements see de Laubier, Patrick, Historie et sociologie du syndicalisme: XlXe-XXe siècles (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar, ch. 2; Launay, Michel, Le Syndicalism en Europe (Paris, 1990)Google Scholar; Pasture, Patrick, Christian Trade Unionism in Europe since 1968 (Aldershot, 1994)Google Scholar; Righart, Hans, De katholieke zuil en Europa: het onstaan van verzuiling onder katholieken in Oostenrijk, Zwitserland, België, Nederland (Meppel, 1986)Google Scholar; Scholl, S.H. (ed.), 150 jaar katholieke Arbeidersbewegirig in West-Europa (Brussels, 1961)Google Scholar; and Visser, Inclusive Unionism; on Christian Democratic parties see Fogarty, Michael P., Christian Democracy in Western Europe 1820–1953. (London, 1957)Google Scholar; and Irving, R.E.M., The Christian Democratic Parties of Western Europe (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

72 Not everywhere did the “Gewerkschaftsfrage” (union question) provoke church intervention as. in Germany (Berlin vs. Cologne movement) and the Netherlands (Limbourg vs. Leiden school) but the potential conflict existed in all Christian labour movements.

73 The Italian CIL (1918) and French CFTC (1919) were hardly representative, the first being concentrated mainly in Lombardia, Veneto and agricultural areas, whilst the latter was founded by a Paris-based clerical union and labor unions from Alsace.

74 In Switzerland, a Protestant union center (SVEA) emerged in 1920 but remained small and became part of the Catholic CNG in 1982. There also exists a small and peripheral Christian union in Denmark.

75 Steiniger, Rudolf, “Pillarization (verzuijing) and Political Parties”, Sociologische Gids, 24 (1977), p. 252Google Scholar.

76 On the modernization thesis see Ellemers, J.E., “Pillarization as a Process of Modernization”, Acta Politico, 19 (1984), pp. 129144Google Scholar; on the socialist threat thesis see Stuurman, Siep, Verzuiling, kapitalisme en patriarchaav. Aspecten van de ontwickeling van de moderne staat in Nederland (Nijmegen, 1983)Google Scholar.

77 Ebbinghaus, Labour Unity in Union Diversity, ch. 4.

78 Although with the establishment of the Communist International in Moscow (Comintern, 1920) and the Red International of Labor Union (RILU, 1921) the Soviet Communist movement enshrined its leadership role in Lenin's 21 conditions for affiliation. On Communist parties see Waller, Michael and Fennema, Meindert (eds), Communist Parties in Western Europe: Decline or Adaptation? (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar; and on “democratic centralism” see especially the contribution by Michael Waller, “Democratic Centralism, the Costs of Discipline”, pp. 7–25.

79 On Communist and syndicalist union movements see national accounts in van der Linden, Marcel and Thorpe, Wayne (eds), Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective (Aldershot, 1990)Google Scholar; and Waller, Michael (ed.), Comrades and Brothers: Communism and Trade Unions in Europe (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

80 Rokkan, “Nation-Building”, pp. 207–208.

81 In Norway, the syndicalist trade union opposition (NFO) captured first the labor party (DNA) in 1918 and thereafter the union center (ALF), affiliating for some years with the Communist International, but in 1923 the Communist party split away. In Germany, Communist trade union opposition was strong within the metalworkers union (DMV) and coexisted with Communist movement in the Ruhr area.

82 Lipset, “Reform or Radicalism”; and Marks, Unions in Politics, ch. 1.

83 Fulcher, “Industrial Relations Diversity”; and Labour Movements, Employers, and the State.

84 Lorwin, “Segmented Pluralism”.

85 Cf. Hellemans, Strijd om de Moderniteiv; Righart, De katholieke zuil; and Stuurman, Venuiling.

86 Lijphart, Politics of Accommodation.

87 Cf. Sartori, Giovanni, Political Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar.

88 Rokkan, “Nation-Building”.

89 Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution.

90 Michels, Robert, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie: Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (Stuttgart, 1989; 1st pub. 1911)Google Scholar.

91 For instructive country studies on political exchange and a comparison between neocorporatist and consociational theory see Scholten, Ilja (ed.).Political Stability and Neo-Corporatism. Corporatist Integration and Societal Cleavages in Western Europe (London, 1987)Google Scholar; for the “end of corporatism” thesis see Lash, Scott and Urry, John, The End of Organized Capitalism (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

92 Crouch, Colin, “Sharing Public Space: States and Organized Interests in Western Europe”, in Hall, J.A. (ed.), States in History (Oxford, 1986), pp. 177210Google Scholar; and Crouch, Industrial Relations, ch. 9.

93 See the recent comparative study by Franklin, Mark N. et al. , Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

94 In recent research on class dealignment in voting behavior, a decline in “cleavage politics” is found to have started in Britain and France before the 1960s, in Denmark and Belgium in the 1960s, somewhat more gradually in the Netherlands and Sweden, and even later in Norway and Italy; see Franklin et al., Electoral Change, p. 394. The continuation of cleavage salience seems to increase from the lack of pillarized cleavage organizations (France, Britain) to political industrial unionism (Denmark, Sweden, Norway), and to still prevailing pillarization (Belgium, Netherlands, Italy).

95 Tilly, “Globalization”.

96 This line of argument is developed in Ebbinghaus, Bernhard and Visser, Jelle, “Wege und Grenzen ‘grenzenloser’ Solidarität: Gewerkschaften und Europäische Integration”, in Streeck, Wolfgang (ed.), Staat und Verbände (Opladen, 1994), pp. 233255Google Scholar; see also Visser, Jelle and Ebbinghaus, Bernhard, “Making the Most of Diversity? European Integration and Transnational Organisation of Labour”, in Greenwood, Justin, Grote, Jürgen and Ronit, Karsten (eds), Organized Interests and the European Community (London, 1992), pp. 207237Google Scholar.