Author Description

It's one of the of long standing questions in political theory: Do parties matter? What effects, if any, do politics have on society? The authors of this careful and articulate book approach these questions by looking at one social group -- public sector employees -- and examine the hypothesis that parties and governments of the left are more generous toward these employees than those of the right. This far-reaching study encompasses the central governments of four countries -- Canada, United States, Britain, and France -- from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s. Public sector employees, being both part of society and part of government, offer an excellent case study to test the autonomy of politics from society. After rigorous research, Blais, Blake, and Dion confirm that in the great majority of cases, the left is indeed more generous than the right, with some unusual and provocative exceptions. There is an alliance, they affirm, albeit a loose one, between public sector employees and the left, an alliance that is consistent over time in Europe and in North America. <i>Governments, Parties, and Public Sector Employees</i> also shows that when the left has to choose between more employment and higher wages for public employees, it tends to choose the former, suggesting that ideology is more important than supporters' pressures in inducing party divergence.