I have a book that Gary Teeple wrote, _Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform_ (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1995; published in the USA by Humanities Press). I don't know how many copies of the book have been sold...5,000, at most? Anything that gets published by Humanities Press has no chance of getting on a bestseller list in America, for sure.
Teeple writes clearly and accessibly, but I'm afraid his prose may be judged by some to be lacking in wit, flair, je ne sais quoi. _Globalization..._ is actually a pretty good book, though; I've found, for instance, his discussion of G. Therborn, Claus Offe, A. Przeworski, Esping-Anderson, etc. quite helpful.
Teeple argues that the economic and social "reforms, which culminated in the post-World War II period as the Keynesian welfare state (KWS), rested on certain economic and political conditions that had made their continued improvement possible. By the end of the 1970s the erosion of these conditions, a consequence of the internationalization of capital, new means of production, and declining national growth, had undermined the continuing expansion of reforms. Economic stagnation and inflation appeared in most of the industrial countries as the continuing expectations of the Keynesian era clashed with the new imperatives of the coming global economy" (1). He goes on to explain in detail changed economic and political conditions. Then, he dissects the problems of social democracy even when it actually existed as a temporarily viable option in rich nations: though reforms are "positive gains for the working class,...these social security programs, from unemployment insurance to state pensions to health care, are financed by deferred or diverted component parts of wage income, not by deductions from the profits of capital, although they do presume wages high enough to allow for deductions" (52). When working-class power actually threatened capital accumulation, the KWS, along with trade union officials, imposed limits on wage settlements through prices and incomes policies, etc. (113, 176); here Teeple cites A. Jones, _The New Inflation: The Politics of Prices and Incomes_ (1973), L. Panitch, _Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy_ (1976), _Trade Unions under Capitalism_, eds. T. Clarke & L. Clamen (1977), L. Panitch & D. Swartz, _From Consent to Coercion: The Assualt on Trade Union Freedoms_ (1985), etc. In other words, social democratic parties managed crises on behalf of capital, engineering the "consent" of organized workers to wage and other concessions to restore profitability. Besides changed economic conditions, late social democracy itself politically paved the way for neo-liberalism (on this point, see, for instance, _The Politics of Thatcherism_).
Fast forward to Teeple's remarks on resistance to the neoliberal political program: "Many aspects of the current political dilemma can be found in the movements against free trade that developed in response to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Canada, Mexico, and the United States....Unless the resistance were advocating a socialist alternative, which it was not and which in any event does not appear plausible at the moment, it was an implicit argument for the status quo ante -- the KWS of the postwar era. But this was a status quo from a past era in which a national capitalist class required a nation-state and a national compromise with 'its' working classes. The structure of capital is today quite different, and a struggle against free trade with no perspective or alternative other than the maintenance of the status quo could hardly hope for success" (147). Teeple writes that "[a]s it stands, there is no North American-wide provisions for trade union organizing, labour mobility, collective bargaining, health and safety standards, workers' rights, or environmental protection" (147-8). Since the anti-NAFTA coalition, organized labor in North America has come to pay more attention to the question of international labor rights, labor mobility, etc. Now, it is the nature of attention -- e.g. anti-China focus -- that has to be politically struggled over, as Rakesh, etc. have argued.
Yoshie
P.S. I doubt that the American mass media will ever mention Teeple favorably.