Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe domestic bases of trans‐governmental regulatory networks are controversial. While rational choice accounts expect insecure regulators to join larger networks that promise to bolster and justify their authority back home, public interest accounts expect independent regulators to join smaller networks populated by like‐minded and informative peers. Are regulatory networks more likely to attract self‐aggrandizing servants of insecure agencies or public‐spirited representatives of their independent counterparts? What are the implications for network size and orientation? I address these questions by examining the regulators who administer labour and employment law in Latin America and find that, in keeping with the public interest account, they are more likely to go abroad when they are independent bureaucrats than when they are vulnerable to political pressure, and less likely to join larger networks of powerful allies than to teach and learn from their Iberian and Latin American peers. The results suggest that trans‐governmental networks rest on Weberian foundations – themselves mediated by linguistic, cultural, and historical factors – that contribute to the reproduction of a multipolar regulatory world.

AbstractThe Latin American model of vocational education has been widely portrayed as a homegrown success story, particularly by scholars and stakeholders who are aware of the region's skill deficits, wary of alien solutions, and suspicious of institutional transfers more generally. Is the Latin American model really homegrown? I use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to trace the model's mores and methods not to the New World but to Central Europe and go on to identify three different transmission paths in the 20th century:imitationby Latin Americans of German origin, descent, and/or training in the run-up to World War II;propagationby West Germanattachésand advisors in an effort to rehabilitate their country's image in the wake of the war; andadaptationby local employers and policymakers—who received additional support from Germany—at the turn of the last century. The results suggest that institutional importation is less a discreteeventoroutcometo be avoided than an ongoingprocessthat, first, entails translation, adaptation, and at times obfuscation by importers as well as exporters; and, second, is facilitated by immigrants, their descendants, and diplomats in transnational contact zones.

Workers in the United States have lost their voice (or influence) in Washington and the workplace. Industrial unions are ill-suited to the postindustrial economy, and alternative organs of representation and influence (i.e., "alt-labor") are trapped in a vicious circle of vulnerability and volatility that limits their likely growth. As a result of this, power is increasingly skewed toward employers and their political allies, who add to labor's difficulties by eliminating and evading remaining labor protections. The federal government could help to restore a balance of power between workers and employers by establishing and enforcing a robust wage floor: (1) a $15 an hour minimum wage, (2) a nationwide hotline for workers who believe that their rights had been violated ("911 for workers"), and (3) a database that would allow regulatory agencies and worker organizations to rationalize and coordinate labor and employment law efforts. Doing so would produce a positive feedback loop so workers regain their voice on the job and in politics.

What explains the differential growth rates that foster international income inequality? The leading sociological answers have taken conflicting positions on the assumptions of self-interest and diminishing returns that are taken for granted in the neoclassical literature. While modernization theorists traced the periphery's inability to take advantage of diminishing returns in the core to "traditional" values that allegedly militated against savings, investment, and growth, and thus denied the universality of self-interest, their neo-Marxist successors traced underdevelopment less to the values of the poor than to the "cumulative" advantages of the rich, and thus denied the inevitability of diminishing returns. The result is a two-front assault that suffers from a serious coordination problem, and I therefore take issue with both the neoclassical accounts and their critics by, first, calling the validity of their assumptions—self-interest and diminishing returns—into question and, second, defending an alternative approach that treats the subordination of self-interest to norms of fairness, trust, and cooperation in the short run as the sine qua non of increasing returns and growth over the long run. The research challenge, therefore, is to unearth the roots of collaborative social norms in particular historical contexts—a challenge that will prove more tractable if development sociologists not only abandon the assumptions of self-interest and diminishing returns but embrace the tools and insights of the new economic sociology.

This article introduces the special issue on "Rewarding Regulation in Latin America" by explaining the origins and potential value of the concept. It pays particularly careful attention to the limits of both regulation, as traditionally practiced, and deregulation in developing democracies today. And it briefly describes the individual contributions to the issue and summarizes their broader lessons.

AbstractPolicymakers in theDominicanRepublic have responded to foreign pressure by rewriting their labor laws and revitalizing their labor ministry. What are the likely consequences? Is aggressive labor law enforcement more likely to protect vulnerable workers from abuse and exploitation or to undermine their ability to compete for labor‐intensive employment in an unforgiving world economy? And what are the broader implications of the answer?Iaddress these questions by analyzing qualitative as well as quantitative data on workplace regulators empowered by theDominicanRepublic in response to trade‐related labor standards imposed by theUnitedStates and find that they reconcile social protection with economic adjustment by simultaneously discouraging "low road" employment practices like informality, union‐busting, and the exploitation of child labor, and encouraging "high road" alternatives that link firms, farms, and families, on the one hand, to public educational, training, and financial institutions, on the other. The result is a potentially inclusive alternative to the repressive industrial relations regime that fueled export‐led development – and theEastAsian "miracle" in particular – in the late twentieth century.