The Puzzle of Strikes
Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy

This book focuses on the strategic interaction of workers, employers and the state in postwar Italian strikes.

Roberto Franzosi (Author)

9780521452878, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 May 1995

530 pages, 76 b/w illus. 85 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm, 0.92 kg

"...this is the best book on cross-temporal patterns in national-level strikes since Shorter and Tilly's excellent work on France, published over two decades ago. It will resonate well beyond the obvious appeal to those interested generally instrikes or more specifically in postwar Italian political economy. Larry W. Isaac, Contemporary Sociology

This book is an attempt to explain the temporal movement of postwar Italian strikes: why and when strikes go up or down and what the strategies of the main actors involved are. In many ways, the book is unique in the social sciences. First, it takes an inductive approach. Rather than start with theories and then use available empirical evidence to test the explanatory power of the theories, the book starts with date. Second, the book is based on a variety of empirical evidence: statistical, historical, ethnographic and survey material. Third, the book considers the strategies of all the actors involved: workers, employers, the state and the radical left. Finally, the book does not simply explain the movement of strikes; more broadly, it attempts to show how strikes, in their turn, deeply affect the economic, institutional and political spheres of society.

List of tables, figures and equations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The puzzle box
2. Labor-market conditions and bargaining power
3. When do workers strike? How the economy matters
4. Organizational resources and collective action
5. The structure of collective bargaining
6. Class power, politics and conflict
7. Mobilization processes: the 1969 autunno caldo
8. Countermobilization processes: reactions by the state and employers to strike waves
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]