Workers Gain Formal Political Power

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-322
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Child Labor ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Industrialization and urbanization during the nineteenth century brought workers physically together, where they could organize and petition through strikes and revolts for better wages, shorter working hours, limits to child labor, safer working conditions, education for their children, and most importantly, the franchise. Although inequality continued to increase, conditions for workers and their families began improving. Workers gained formal political power within government. Yet although workers acquired the vote and with it the potential for dramatically rewriting the rules of the game (because they held the overwhelming majority of votes), elites’ ideology was effective in convincing them to restrain their political muscle. Nevertheless, elites’ monopoly control over the political sphere had been broken. As a result, they could no longer as readily use violence to put down worker demands. Their retention of disproportionate shares of income, wealth, and privilege would depend more fully upon the persuasiveness of their ideology.

scholarly journals Policy Entrepreneurs and the Origins of the Regulatory Welfare State: Child Labor Reform in Nineteenth-Century Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Child Labor ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurs ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
Labor Reform ◽  
Structural Class ◽  
Working Children ◽  
Child Labor Laws

Industrial child labor laws were the earliest manifestation of the modern regulatory welfare state. Why, despite the absence of political pressure from below, did some states (but not others) succeed in legislating working hours, minimum ages, and schooling requirements for working children in the first half of the nineteenth century? I use case studies of the politics behind the first child labor laws in Germany and France, alongside a case study of a failed child labor reform effort in Belgium, to answer this question. I show that existing structural, class-based, and institutional theories of the welfare state are insufficient to explain why child labor laws came about. Highlighting instead the previously neglected role of elite policy entrepreneurs, I argue that the success or failure of early nineteenth-century child labor laws depended on these actors’ social skill, pragmatic creativity, and goal-directedness. At the same time, their actions and influence were conditioned by their field position and the architecture of the policy field. By specifying the qualities and conditions that enable policy entrepreneurs to build the alliances needed to effect policy change, this analysis lends precision to the general claim that their agency matters.

An Enduring Dilemma: Teaching National Identity in Lebanon

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Dueck
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
French Government ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Educational Provision ◽  
Sectarian Conflict

The situation in Lebanon shared many features with that in Syria. Education and language were symbolic pillars of political power and collective identity in both countries. That said, there were marked differences between the educational systems in Syria and Lebanon. In spite of the occasional threat of violence, schools in Lebanon did not become targets for popular aggression as they did in Syria. Struggles over education were confined to the political sphere where the debates were sometimes intense. The actual practice of politics was dominated by intra-sectarian conflict in which Christians and Muslims formed cross-confessional allegiances to further their interests within their own communities. The discussion also considers how educational provision affected the network of relationships between the French government, the French missionaries, the Maronite Patriarchy, and the Maqāsid Islamic Charitable Association.

The Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 335-346
Author(s):  
Laszlo Solymar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Moving Pictures ◽  
Year 2000

Some past predictions of the future are discussed, how both in Britain and in France during the nineteenth century illustrated newspapers predicted that by the year 2000 communications between people would involve sending moving pictures from faraway places. A few major technical innovations are envisaged. Most things will just be improved, e.g. full movies will be downloadable in seconds. In the political sphere it is emphasized that apart from a small elite, interest in politics will decline. In most parts of the world people will be happy to accept the word of authorities on any subject. Education will sink to its lowest common denominator.

Napoleonic Legacies and the Reform Act of 1832

2018 ◽  
pp. 57-82
Author(s):  
Laura Eastlake
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Image ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
National Values ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
Radical Republicanism

This chapter examines the use of ancient Rome for articulating national values, synthesizing the public image of statesmen, and constructing partisan ideologies in the nineteenth-century political sphere. If the schoolroom was a space in which boys were taught to wield the language and literatures of ancient Rome like weapons in defence of the boundaries of elite male culture, uses of Rome in the political sphere should fluctuate so dramatically between enthusiastic adoption and outright rejection over the course of the nineteenth century. It accounts for such uneasy receptions of ancient Rome in Victorian political discourse by setting them in the wider context of Anglo-French tensions. It suggests that French revolutionary and Napoleonic uses of Rome are crucial for explaining both the very direct engagement of British political commentators with the Roman past immediately after Waterloo, as they sought to detach Rome from associations of revolution, radical republicanism, and violent popular protest; and secondly, the abandonment of such strategies in the period leading up to the Reform Act of 1832, as the Roman parallel became contested and unstable.

The History of Local Political Power—Some Suggestions for Analysis

1977 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Garrard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Community Power ◽  
History Of

This paper represents an attempt to analyse certain aspects of the work on ‘community power’ within a historical context. It begins with a critical review of those writers whose work has included a historical dimension, particularly R. A. Dahl. It is argued that generalizations about the location of power in the past need to go beyond the mere analysis of the background of office-holders, and the consequent search for a socioeconomic ‘élite’. Indeed, such generalizations need to be tested quite as rigorously as any that are made about the present. On the basis of research done on Salford, an attempt is made to suggest a framework for the comparative analysis of the political context within which nineteenth-century urban municipal leaders operated, and by which their power was conditioned.

scholarly journals AGAMA DAN POLITIK DALAM BINGKAI HISTORIS PERKEMBANGAN PEMIKIRAN ISLAM

AHSANA MEDIA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Abd. Ghoffar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Discourses

The tug of war regarding the perception of Islam whether as a series of religious teachings or also at the same time a part of the state system that regulates the political power of the state has actually exposed the surface as a central issue since the end of the nineteenth century and entered the early twentieth century. This perception of Islam is very significant for the development of religious and political discourses which until now are still being discussed. From the discussion of this topic also was born a series of intellectual figures who had filled out the history sheet and carved gold ink through their ideas or concepts about religion and the state that reached the processor of our brain today. Through them we can transfer thoughts so that trans ideas occur. The discussion that is oriented towards Muslim intellectual thinking is very useful for us in order to reformulate our perceptions of religion and politics in order to be more applicable in Islamic and state-of-the-art insight.

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