Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class And Elites In Western Europe And South America (cambridge Studies In Comparative Politics)

The question of whether democratization is an elite-led process from above or a popular triumph from below continues to be an area of contention among political scientists. Examining the experiences of countries which have provided the main empirical base for recent theorizing, namely, Western Europe and South America in the 19th and early 20th centuries and again in the 1970s and 1980s, this book delineates a more complex and varied set of patterns. The volume explores the politics of democratization through a comparative analysis that examines the role of labor in relation to elite strategies in both contemporary and historical perspectives. In her detailed analysis, Professor Collier also describes multiple patterns within each historical period, challenges conventional understandings of these events, and recaptures a role for unions and labor-based parties in contemporary processes of democratization. The question of whether democratization is an elite-led process from above or a popular triumph from below continues to be an area of contention among political scientists. Examining the experiences of countries that have provided the main empirical base for recent theorizing, namely, Western Europe and South America, this book delineates a more complex and varied set of patterns. The volume explores democratization through a comparative analysis that examines the role of labor in relation to elite strategies in both contemporary and historical perspectives. Elite Conquest Or Working-class Triumph? -- Elite-led Reform In Early Democratization -- Political Calculations And Socialist Parties -- Labor Action In Recent Democratization -- Comparing The Patterns: The Working Class And Democratization. Ruth Berins Collier. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 199-221) And Index. Examining the experiences of Western Europe and South America, Professor Collier delineates a complex and varied set of patterns of democratization The role of the working class in democracy and democratization is a classic and contested question.