Suchergebnisse

Annotation

Clyde Barrow's More Than a Historian provides a fascinating intellectual history of Charles Beard, a political scientist whom he places in the "pantheon of thinkers that most scholars no longer read" (p. xvi). With 42 books, scores of coauthored books, and hundreds of articles and book reviews, Beard can be only characterized as amazingly prolific. Yet the only book that still resonates in political science and American history is An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913). Barrow's history of Beard gives us ample reason finally to read it or read it again.

Traces the legislative history of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to argue that it represents a missed opportunity to bolster the marginalized role of women & minorities. It is contended that the special treatment approach, as opposed to the equal treatment approach, holds greater promise of constructing a more progressive social welfare state. Changing the rules of the game gives disadvantaged groups the possibility of obtaining more political & economic power. A look at the limited applicability of the "universal" FLSA indicates its weakness stems from inadequate institutional execution that was primarily related to the Wage & Hour Division put in place by New Deal Democrats. This regulatory agency focused on guaranteeing universal rights to better wages/work conditions instead of the procedural power to bargain for them. The recourse for social transformation offered by the 1935 creation of the National Labor Relations Board is discussed, along with the probability of different outcomes for workers, unions, & the political landscape if Congress had given unions the power to police sweatshops. 163 References. J. Lindroth

The history of the American welfare state is often recounted as a long line of missed opportunities. As the story goes, the absence of a labor party, or American exceptionalism, helped create a weak welfare state. Initially, some political scientists, labor economists, and historians attributed American exceptionalism to the pure and simple unionism of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In the 1990s, however, a number of political scientists and legal historians revised their understanding of American exceptionalism. Given the legal bias within the common law that benefited individuals rather than groups, conservative state and federal court judges pursued peremptory legal strategies, like the labor injunction, that shaped the course of the American labor movement. It was repressive state action, the revisionists argue, that explains why organized labor, and the unions that came to dominate the movement, pursued a less expansive vision of trade unionism and the American state.