--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Looking for something else I stumbled on this
> edition of American
> Historical Review from February 2006 that addresses
> a theme that's
> come up here now and again. All of the articles
> mentioned here are
> available online:
>
>
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/111.1/
>
[WS:]Thanks for that link, it was very useful. I printed the articles and will read them soon. Off the top of my head, Spierenburg's claim makes a lot of sense to me and dove tails with other cross-Atlantic comparisons, e.g. welfare policies. Theda Skocpol argues that the US version of democracy was an obstacle to the development of the organized labor and labor-influenced welfare policies. Arendt Lijphart compares majoritarian and corporatists/parliamentary democracies and concludes that the latter are much better at curbing social conflicts and solving social problems.
I will read the papers as soon as I can, I will probably comment more.
Wojtek
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