Matching Items (4)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Politics
- All Subjects: Sonderweg
- All Subjects: The United States
- Creators: Thomson, Henry
Description
Alexis de Tocqueville, French political theorist and scientist, theorized in the 19th century that “France cannot reform except through revolution” (Heisbourg, 2016). As France continues to face a strained economy with high unemployment and stalled growth, the OECD recommends that France should implement labor reform “to promote job growth” (OECD, 2015). Labor reform refers to removing labor protections for French employees, resulting in an increase in firing and hiring flexibility for employers.
Recent governments in France have failed to bring about meaningful labor reform, faced with opposition in the streets or within their own political party. The election of Emanuel Macron, viewed as a political outsider who had never held elected office created his own political party, En Marche, seemed like the catalyst to lasting economic reform. However, if high unemployment and slow economic growth to comparable economies have been concerns for France since the beginning of the 21st century, why were past governments unsuccessful in implementing legislative actions to address labor reform?
This paper will argue that the election of Macron and the establishment of En Marche was caused by a shift in power that allowed Macron enough support to sway the political landscape of France and implement labor market reform. This largely has to do with the power struggle between France’s Outsiders, “those without secure employment, Insiders, “those with secure employment” and the Upscale group, “employers, the upper middle class, and the business and financial community” (Rudea, 2007). However, the degree and preservation of Macron’s reform plans are threatened by Insiders who have been stripped of employee protections.
Recent governments in France have failed to bring about meaningful labor reform, faced with opposition in the streets or within their own political party. The election of Emanuel Macron, viewed as a political outsider who had never held elected office created his own political party, En Marche, seemed like the catalyst to lasting economic reform. However, if high unemployment and slow economic growth to comparable economies have been concerns for France since the beginning of the 21st century, why were past governments unsuccessful in implementing legislative actions to address labor reform?
This paper will argue that the election of Macron and the establishment of En Marche was caused by a shift in power that allowed Macron enough support to sway the political landscape of France and implement labor market reform. This largely has to do with the power struggle between France’s Outsiders, “those without secure employment, Insiders, “those with secure employment” and the Upscale group, “employers, the upper middle class, and the business and financial community” (Rudea, 2007). However, the degree and preservation of Macron’s reform plans are threatened by Insiders who have been stripped of employee protections.
ContributorsLoonam, Daniel Francis (Author) / Thomson, Henry (Thesis director) / Kirsch, Robert (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Regarding the question “Why do sanctions fail?” the majority of sanctions studies take the perspective of the target countries or the interactions between the dyadic countries involved, but the sender countries’ impact on sanctions’ effectiveness is largely neglected. This dissertation looks at the domestic economic actors, i.e., enterprises and consumers, of the sender countries. By answering “Who participates in economic sanctions?” this dissertation assesses one factor potentially influencing the sanctions’ effectiveness: the sanctions participation and evasion inside the sender countries. More precisely speaking, this dissertation applies the factor of the political connections economic actors have with their governments to explain their participation in or circumvention from sanctions imposed by their own countries. This dissertation consists of three independent empirical papers, respectively. The first looks at the anti-Japanese consumer boycotts in China 2012, the second at the trade controls by companies inside mainland China targeting Taiwan in 2002, and the third, the Steel and Aluminum Tariffs imposed by the US since 2018. Generally speaking, the papers find that strong political connections in China promote sanctions participation, reflected via the larger transaction reduction by organizational consumers and State-Owned Enterprises, yet facilitate sanctions evasion in the US, reflected by the larger chance for tariff exemptions for companies with more political importance and monetary investment to the governments. Dissertation findings reveal the effect of connections on sanctions, and at the same time show how divergent institutions make one variable function in the opposite way.
ContributorsKONG, FANYING (Author) / Thies, Cameron (Thesis advisor) / Shair-Rosenfield, Sarah (Committee member) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Created after the Second World War, the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, was a new and important part of the United States military and intelligence apparatus. Throughout the next two decades, the agency was tasked with working alongside the president and Department of State to promote the United States’ interests abroad, and work to prevent the spread of communism during the Cold War. It engaged in multiple controversial regime changes during this era and consistently drifted away from presidential authority. Despite this, the CIA never lost funding and always had complete support from the president. The CIA would face a reckoning during the Kennedy Administration, though, when its director was forced to resign. The understanding of the CIA’s relationship to the resident and his authority is crucial to analyzing the operations it performed, and the ever-increasing power the agency would wield in its global fight against communism.
ContributorsRadu, Zachary (Author) / Niebuhr, Robert (Thesis director) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
This paper applies six components of Tocqueville's lens to Imperial Germany in an effort to demonstrate how from a contemporary's perspective the Kaiserreich can be understood to have deviated from what was conceived at the time as the standard path to political, economic, and social modernity, and that these deviations give a justification for the original positive understanding of a German Sonderweg that balanced the excesses of both Western Liberalism and Eastern Reactionarism whilst using the best.
ContributorsMcCoy, Jonah F (Author) / Taliaferro, Karen (Thesis director) / Benkert, Volker (Committee member) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (Contributor)
Created2021-12