There is a developing crisis of social democratic trade unionism in Western Europe; this volume outlines the crisis and examines the emerging alternatives. The authors define 'social democratic trade unionism' and its associated party-union nexus and explain how this traditional model has been threatened by social democracy's accommodation to neo-liberal restructuring and public service reform. Examining the experience of Sweden, Germany, Britain and France, the volume explores the historical rise and fall of social democratic trade unionism in each of these countries and probes the policy and practice of the European Trade Union Confederation. The authors critically examine the possibilities for a revival of social democratic unionism in terms of strategic policy and identity, offering suggestions for an alternative, radicalized political unionism. The research value of the book is highlighted by its focus on contemporary developments and its authors' intimate knowledge of the chosen countries.

There is a developing crisis of social democratic trade unionism in Western Europe; this volume outlines the crisis and examines the emerging alternatives. The authors define 'social democratic trade unionism' and its associated party-union nexus and explain how this traditional model has been threatened by social democracy's accommodation to neo-liberal restructuring and public service reform. Examining the experience of Sweden, Germany, Britain and France, the volume explores the historical rise and fall of social democratic trade unionism in each of these countries and probes the policy and practice of the European Trade Union Confederation. The authors critically examine the possibilities for a revival of social democratic unionism in terms of strategic policy and identity, offering suggestions for an alternative, radicalized political unionism. The research value of the book is highlighted by its focus on contemporary developments and its authors' intimate knowledge of the chosen countries.

This book outlines a developing crisis of social democratic trade unionism in Western Europe and examines emerging alternatives. The authors define 'social democratic trade unionism' and its associated party-union nexus and explain how this traditional model has been threatened by social democracy's accommodation to neoliberal restructuring and public service reform. The experience of Sweden, Germany, Britain and France is examined and the historical rise and fall of social democratic trade unionism in each country is explored. A further chapter probes the policy and practice of the European Trade Union Confederation. The authors critically examine the possibilities for a revival of social democratic unionism in terms of strategic policy and identity and suggest possibilities for an alternative, radicalised political unionism. The research value of the book is highlighted by its focus on contemporary developments and its authors' intimate knowledge of the chosen countries.

Socialist and Social Democratic parties leave few political observers and citizens indifferent. For several years, a certain number of actors on the political scene have presented it as a political family in crisis, lacking in imagination and dynamism, incapable of renewal and doomed to fade into insignificance. Others, on the contrary, describe it as a grouping with a promising, even brilliant future.This book does not set out to confirm either of those two visions. Its aim is to analyse in-depth the transformations which are affecting, at the current time, the different aspects of Social Democracy: new organisational models, changes in political and electoral performance, changing relations with the trade unions and civil society associations, reactions to the emergence of new political rivais and new values, new ideological trends and political programmes, etc. For the first time, the analysis does not concern exclusively Western Europe, but also deals with the Social Democratic parties of the consolidated democracies and the organisations that claim to be part of democratic socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, and highlights the specific characteristics and points in common. At the dawn of the 21st century, it is therefore the challenges and the different responses to those challenges that are analysed by several of the leading European specialists in Social Democratic parties in Europe.

Historian and geographer Sorensen (1952-95) wrote her analysis of Danish political policy towards the Marshall Plan during the middle 1980s, but Rudiger says it continues to be essential reading for historians interested in the immediate postwar period. The new edition drops her chapter on COCOM, because more recent studies have made in superfluous. The rest of the study remains intact. It is not indexed. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A major new history of how democracy became the dominant political force in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century What happened in the years following World War II to create a democratic revolution in the western half of Europe? In Western Europe's Democratic Age, Martin Conway provides an innovative new account of how a stable, durable, and remarkably uniform model of parliamentary democracy emerged in Western Europe—and how this democratic ascendancy held fast until the latter decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Conway describes how Western Europe's postwar democratic order was built by elite, intellectual, and popular forces. Much more than the consequence of the defeat of fascism and the rejection of Communism, this democratic order rested on universal male and female suffrage, but also on new forms of state authority and new political forces—primarily Christian and social democratic—that espoused democratic values. Above all, it gained the support of the people, for whom democracy provided a new model of citizenship that reflected the aspirations of a more prosperous society. This democratic order did not, however, endure. Its hierarchies of class, gender, and race, which initially gave it its strength, as well as the strains of decolonization and social change, led to an explosion of demands for greater democratic freedoms in the 1960s, and to the much more contested democratic politics of Europe in the late twentieth century. Western Europe's Democratic Age is a compelling history that sheds new light not only on the past of European democracy but also on the unresolved question of its future.