Responding to recent studies that have argued that urban regime analysis (URA) is inappropriate for studying urban politics in Europe or in the 21st century, this article argues that URA is a powerful analytical tool to understand the dynamics of contemporary urban governance. It does so by drawing on evidence from the Swiss cities of Zurich and Bern since the turn of the millennium. In both cities, the realization of major urban projects has relied on strong public-private cooperation structured around the mobilization and exchange of five resources (“land”, “law”, “money”, “expertise” and “democratic support”). Drawing on this empirical evidence, the article concludes by presenting two types of regimes: the PRIVATE-public regime and the PUBLIC-private regime.
Europe has been marked by many profound changes since the 1980s. Among those prominently discussed in the political economy literature are the massive decline in trade union membership, the alarming rise in income inequality, and the increasingly disproportionate distribution of labor market risks. This thesis combines these issues and explores how unionization relates to income and risk inequality by investigating the roles of trade unions and trade union membership in the political arena: One article analyzes if and how unions represent high-risk individuals in the legislative arena by lobbying for labor market outsiders in dualization reforms; three articles examine how union membership shapes electoral demand for policies alleviating income and labor market risk inequality and electoral support for left-wing parties in pursuit of such policies. In doing so, this thesis contributes to our understanding of solidarity in the context of inequality and how union decline might fuel inequality.
While movement activists spend much of their time and energy trying to change the world, our theoretical and empirical knowledge in this field is still relatively poor. In Social Protest and Policy Change, Marco Giugni offers a systematic and empirically grounded analysis of the impact of three major contemporary movements on public policy. Using a comparative and historical perspective, Giugni argues that a social movement's policy impact is facilitated by the presence of favorable political opportunity structures, coupled with the presence of institutional allies among the elites, and a favorable public opinion. Furthermore, the very content of a movement's demands plays a role, insofar as the power holders are often more willing to make concessions on certain issues than on others. Within a unique body of original data the author incorporates a historical overview of the mobilization of the ecology, antinuclear, and peace movements in the United States, Italy, and Switzerland. He presents the results of time-series analyses and reveals the combined effects of protest, political alliances, and shifts in public opinion on movements which do not address issues posing too serious a threat to the power holders
