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An expansive literature demonstrates the importance of centralized wage bargaining for economic outcomes in OECD countries. Scholars have devoted far less attention to the origins of centralized bargaining and the question of why variations in the degree of bargaining centralization exist. Standard accounts suggest that centralized wage bargaining is the product of one of three factors: the exposure of small markets to trade, the strategic interest of employers in coordinated wage bargaining, or the Olsonian logic of union encompassment. In this paper, we show the importance of politics in generating centralized wage bargaining. We argue that political parties (not unions) are the relevant encompassing organizations that internalize the externalities of union behavior. Historically, left parties endeavored to use union-party ties to forge robust structures of centralized wage bargaining when they were electorally competitive and were successful in doing so when they had a high degree of control over affiliated unions. We test this hypothesis through historical process tracing in three paradigmatic cases (Sweden, West Germany and the United Kingdom) and a quantitative analysis of centralized bargaining in 15 OECD countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political disengagement of young people is a common theme across many of the mature democracies. One element of this disengagement is a cluster of characteristics and proclivities that might be termed "political inattentiveness." This inattentiveness among the young comprises three key elements: low levels of political knowledge, a relative lack of political interest and inattention to politics in the media. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of political inattentiveness among the young by assembling longitudinal data for six countries: Canada, the United States, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. The surveys are used to trace differences between young and old in political knowledge, interest and media attentiveness from the 1950s to the present day. This longitudinal and comparative analysis helps establish which dimensions of political attentiveness have changed most notably, the timing of these changes and the degree of cross-national divergence and convergence. In addition to the empirical contribution, the paper also assesses the implications of the findings for different theoretical accounts of political disengagement among the young. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at how party systems in Britain, the U.S., and Sweden have responded to the feminist movement. First, party pledges, as stated in platforms and manifestos, will be analyzed. To what extent do the parties make “feminist” pledges”? Different definitions of “feminist policy” will be analyzed and an argument will be made for one. Next, to what extent have such pledges been enacted into policy? What factors obstruct or encourage feminist policy success? The chosen cases allow us to analyze systems that are culturally and institutionally different. The U.S. and Britain are argued by Siaroff (1994) to be in the same “feminist family of nations”â€"“Protestant Liberal”â€"while Sweden is “Protestant Social Democratic.” A comparison of what parties say about feminist issues helps us to test whether this “family of nations” concept is useful. Comparing pledge enactment across countries also allows us to look at the impact of institutions on feminist policy; we will be comparing presidential two-party, parliamentary two-party, and parliamentary multi-party systems. This work will contribute to the literatures on comparative parties, comparative public policy generally, and comparative feminist policy specifically. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of courts in the newly liberalized telecommunications and electricity sectors in three European countries, the UK, France and Sweden. The paper found a growth in the use and influence of courts, but limited to certain actors and issues. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the episodic and thematic framing of the most recent national elections in Sweden (2002) and Britain (2005), illustrating the presence of structural bias in media coverage. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]