Search

Theorists of class conflict have debated the nature of the relationship between economic development and the incidence of strikes. The liberal perspective contends that such developments as the growth in size of corporations and the separation of ownership from control enable modern management to institutionalize industrial conflict in the form of collective bargaining. In contrast, writers in the radical perspective argue that conflict will increase in late industrialization owing to such forces as the bipolarization of classes and an increase in union strength. The present paper tests these structuralist theories by using data from a sampling of seventy-one nations representing a wide range in economic development. A polynomial regression analysis indicates that strike volume, a chief measure of overall strike activity, follows a parabolic curve—increasing until a GNP per capita of about $4,700 is reached and then declining. No support is found for the radical thesis of an upswing in strike activity at high levels of economic development. The findings on control variables indicate that the inflation rate and mass-media development have significantly positive effects on strike activity. Finally, a democratic political climate tends to lower strike volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing research on political protest—which use data on events in pluralist societies —stresses the importance of target characteristics and the distribution of social support as explanatory variables affecting protest outcomes. This paper questions the applicability of these findings for explaining protest outcomes in hegemonies. An analysis of 303 protest events in the USSR yields the conclusion that measures of the internal strength of protest groups are the most important determinants of the effectiveness of Soviet dissident groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cameron raises five general criticisms of our article. Most of these are couched in terms of "possible" problems that "may" be present. The real issues are whether they are, in fact, present and whether corrections would result in substantially different findings. In addition, there are some misreadings and exaggerations in Cameron's critique that we would like to address. In the first paragraph, Cameron says we concluded that political factors do not influence cross-national strike variations. This is simply not the case. Because Jackman's democratic performance index was only available for a little more than half of the countries we studied, we omitted this variable from part of the analysis, but that is not equivalent to denying its importance. We did test for its effects with a subsample of those nations for which the necessary data were available, and reported a significant negative influence on strike volume in Table 3, in the corresponding text (p. 55), and even in the abstract! Our measure of economic development, GNP per capita, is misstated throughout the critique as being GDP. The gross national product and gross domestic product may be closely related, but they are not interchangeable. The former takes into account exports and imports, while the latter does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haas and Stack (1983) make a bold attempt to establish an empirical relationship between strike volume (working-days lost due to industrial disputes) and economic development using parametric statistical techniques in the form of ordinary least squares regression. They conclude that "the effect of economic development on strikes follows a parabolic curve" (p. 56). While the authors express the customary caution about the reliability of their data, they ignore various problems with their data, i.e., method and technique which may invalidate the conclusions of the study. These problems are dealt with in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]