Transitions to economic democracy: Corporations, collective action, councils and codetermination in twentieth century Germany and South Africa

This dissertation analyzes the process of class formation at the institutional level in twentieth century Germany and South Africa. Through an examination of the ways in which labor and employer organizations organize their interests in these countries, it interrogates sociological claims that employers permanently enjoy an organizing capacity greater than their employee counterparts. Arguing that the organization and articulation of interests should be understood within a transnational, comparative framework rather than a merely national one as corporatist literature suggests, the dissertation finds that in comparatively backward contexts, employers are bestowed with considerable short-term advantages over both potential competitors in their product markets and over their employees in the labor market. These advantages derive in large measure from the conditions in which large corporations in backward contexts enter the global political economy. In the longer term, however, the picture looks quite different.; The examples of the German coal and steel industry and the South African gold and diamonds industry show that large firms in these sectors were able successfully to combine their product and labor market advantages as a means of consolidating economic and political power. Through their respective dominant employers associations, they could further impose constraints on labor's free collective bargaining regionally and nationally.; The terms of these employer advantages, however, are highly contingent and unstable. In their violation of the norms of free organization, employers and their authoritarian state allies unintentionally foster more extensive forms of worker organization, while also politicizing labor's place in the social order. When such authoritarian coalitions weaken, employers are forced to cede to the demands of labor organizations that show an unusually high degree of organization compared with their counterparts in “older” industrialized nations. A further legacy of post-authoritarian democratization is a more fully articulated labor law in comparatively backward contexts that further strengthens labor movements' longer-term advantage over their employers.; Based on archival research, interviews, newspapers, and other printed sources, this dissertation engages in new ways of understanding German and South African developmental “peculiarity,” the role of associations in organizing employer and employee interests, the dynamics of labor movements, and their relation to democratization.