The Architecture of Militancy
Workers and the State in Algeria, 1970-1990
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6247476 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christopher Alexander (0000-0001-5018-7238, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 315 |
| Publication date | 2002-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4159 • E-ISSN: 2151-6227 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/4146956 |
| OpenAlex | W2323199254 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 2 |
capital relations in late industrializing countries. How can labor's varying responses to privatization, subsidy reduction, and other reforms that undermine long-standing state-labor relationships be explained? Why do workers develop strong collective identities and strategies in some cases but not in others? Why does militancy remain focused on workplace issues in some cases while elsewhere it takes up broader social and political grievances? Moral economy and macrostructural analyses figure prominently in efforts to answer these questions. This article evaluates these two frameworks through an examination of state-labor relations in Algeria from the early 1970s through the late 1980s. Algeria is a case where both approaches might be expected to fare well. While its experience conforms to important moral economy and macrostructural expectations, it also confounds both frameworks. This article identifies these points of conflict and proposes an alternative that accounts more successfully for Algeria's pattern of state-labor relations. This alternative involves a historical institutionalist analysis that emphasizes the ways in which wage bargaining and other labor institutions distribute power and uncertainty across the work force. These institutions play a key role in shaping the formation of collective identities. Institutions established by the Algerian government helped to generate a wave of worker unrest in the middle and late 1970s, but these institutions also created divisions within the work force that prevented the rise of a politicized working class movement. New institutions in the late 1980s sparked even greater unrest, but these institutions bridged divisions and encouraged the development of a more unified and politicized labor movement
Archaeology · Criminology · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Architecture · Computer Science · History · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature · Political and Social Issues
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,26 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2024 (18) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |