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DOGAN
AWARD: BEST BOOK PUBLISHED IN 2004/5.
Kathleen
Thelen, How Institutions
Evolve. The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the
United States and Japan. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
What
can the history of vocational training teach us about the dynamics
of institutional change? The
answer, it turns out, is “a great deal.” Drawing on her massive knowledge of the political economy of
advanced industrial societies, Thelen mounts a challenge to two
influential models of institutional change: the “punctuated
equilibrium” model that emphasizes the impact of rapid
transformations, and the general equilibrium model that postulates
evolutionary convergence towards an organizational optimum. The
punctuated equilibrium model, she argues, cannot explain the
persistence of skill regimes across the socio-political upheavals
of the Twentieth Century. And the general equilibrium model cannot
account for the sub-optimal training systems that took root in
Britain and the US. To
understand these divergent trajectories, she shows, we must look
at the relationship between political elites, employers
associations, skilled workers and the labor movement during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
For it was relations and conflicts between these
constituencies which determined how, and how effectively, skills
would be transmitted and certified. To understand the subsequent
evolution of skills regimes, however, we must examine the ongoing
attempts of these and other players to adjust rules and shift
authority, bit by bit, in the way that would be most
“efficient” for them. Because multiple equlibria are possible,
Thelen argues, historical conjunctures do matter. But so does
historical time, because incremental changes can gradually
cumulate into institutional transformation.
DOGAN
AWARD: HONORABLE MENTION
Deborah
J. Yashar, Contesting
Citizenship in Latin America. The Rise of Indigenous Movements and
the Postliberal Challenge. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005.
What
explains the sudden rise of indigenous movements in Latin America
since the early 1990s?
That is the question which this elegantly constructed,
deeply researched and lucidly written book seeks to address.
Drawing on a broad survey of indigenous politics throughout
the region and a careful comparison of three key cases –
Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru – and marshalling the conceptual tools
of the “contentious politics” school of political sociology,
Yashar argues that the answer lies in “citizenship regimes”,
“transcommunity networks” and “political associational
space.” During the
mid-Twentieth Century, she shows, many Latin American states
sought to organize the populace along class lines through
“corporatist citizenship regimes”, which granted land and
power to social groups, unwittingly increasing the power and
autonomy of indigenous populations. In the late Twentieth Century,
however, these same states sought to reorganize the populace along
individualistic lines, through “neoliberal citizenship
regimes”, which granted rights and privileges on an individual
basis, unwittingly threatening the power and autonomy of these
selfsame populations. But
whether or not these grievances translated into resistance
depended on the existence of “transcommunity networks”,
created by unions, churches and NGOs, and on the availability of
“political associational space”, where networks could
metamorphose into movements.
Yashar argues that these movements have more in common with
multi-culturalist strivings
in the US, Canada, and Oceania, than with ethnic movements in
Africa and South Asia, a claim strikingly confirmed by the upswell
of protest occasioned by the recent debate about illegal
immigration to the US. And
she urges us to study the hybrid forms of citizenship that are
emerging in Latin America, as we look for practical political
solutions to democratic co-existence in pluralistic societies.
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