Suchergebnisse

This article discusses the 'associational democratic' model of relationship between state & civil society organizations, which recommends devolution of as many regulatory functions as possible to local groups & associations with detailed knowledge of problems & possible solutions, extensive monitoring capacities & the potential to deliberate about generalizable as opposed to purely sectional interests. The goal is to introduce greater doses of realism in a model that has, so far, mostly been confined to abstract, normative discussions. The article does so by discussing two themes in particular: the link between associational democracy & neo-corporatism, & the relationship between deliberation -- a crucial element in the normative model -- & bargaining. References. Adapted from the source document.

Based on field research at both the national and local levels, this article reconstructs the emergence of negotiated policy making in Italy in the 1990s. It argues that standard corporatist theory is totally incapable of accounting for the particular organizational mechanisms through which, at critical moments, that is, the moments in which policy change had to be introduced, consensus was mobilized among both middle-level union structures and rank-and-file workers in Italy. In fact, absent centralized organizational capacities, the Italian unions relied heavily on democratic decision-making procedures. These procedures strengthened the unions' capacity to hold to their side of the bargaining in national negotiations through essentially two types of mechanisms, aggregative and deliberative.