Labor Movements and Dictatorships
The Southern Cone in Comparative Perspective
Paul W. Drake(Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Published on 23. July 1996
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-0-8018-5326-5 (ISBN)
Description
A comparative study of the experience of working-class movements under capitalist authoritarian regimes from the 1920s to the 1990s. This text offers a series of extended country studies - on Uruguay, Chile and Argentina - set against a larger comparative context that includes Portugal, Spain, Greece and Brazil, all of which experienced similar transitions into and out of authoritarianism. In these countries , the author explains, labour movements advocating far-reaching political, economic, and social reforms were met by authoritarian governments determined to preserve capitalism and erase any hope of socialism. The autocrats imposed antiworker economic structures, institutional rules and political prohibitions. They succeeded in breaking labour in the short run, he concludes, but their efforts ultimately failed. A work of historical perspective and synthesis, the book tells the story of how workers' organizations around the world suffered, subverted, and survived the tyrants.
Reviews / Votes
"Paul Drake has written a useful analysis of the role of labor and left parties that deserves study and could profitably be employed in latin American studies and comparative government classes. I give it my strongest recommendation."--N. Patrick Peritore, 'Journal of Developing Areas' "Drake has made an important contribution to comparative labor studies and to comparative politics, particularly to the literature on democratic breakdowns, authoritarian regimes, and transitions to democracy, where the role of labor has been generally neglected. He succeeds in showing that authoritarian regimes seize power in large part as a response to perceived labor mobilization and, therefore, target labor and its leftist allies as primary victims. The book's comparative focus and country narratives also provide a rich and complex analysis of labor's experience of authoritarian rule, of the process of redemocratization, and of restored democracy."--Peter Winn, Tufts UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore, MD
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-5326-5 (9780801853265)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Paul W. Drake is Institute of the Americas Professor of Inter-American Affairs in the Department of Political Science and dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. His books include 'The Money Doctor in the Andes' and 'Socialism and Populism in Chile.