Title

Striking Concessions From Governments: The Success Of General Strikes In Western Europe, 1980-2009

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, Western European labor unions in eleven of sixteen West European countries have mobilized protesters in a rising number of general strikes, opposing policy reforms by national governments. In over 40 percent of the cases, governments ceded concessions in response. The variation in government responses to general strikes can be explained by examining properties of governments, such as type of government and party family. Based on an original dataset using logistic regression, analysis of the outcomes of seventy-five general strikes indicates that concessions to unions are more likely when governments rule in coalition, and are led by center or Christian Democratic parties, compared to social democratic and conservative governments. A tentative explanation for this finding is based on shifting ideological alliances in multiparty systems. © 2013 Publishing Technology.

Publication Date

10-1-2013

Publication Title

Comparative Politics

Volume

46

Issue

1

Number of Pages

23-41

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.5129/001041513807709356

Socpus ID

84886608406 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84886608406

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