Tuesday, November 12, 2019

O "estado social" foi criado por reação ao comunismo? (II)

Rorming to Survive:The Bolshevik Origins of Social Policies, por Magnus Bergli Rasmussen e Carl Henrik Knutsen:

The Bolshevik Revolution brought profound social changes to the modern world. This worker-led revolution, with aspirations far beyond the country of origin, became a threat and symbol of revolution to ruling elites around the world. We develop a theory of how elites provide policy concessions when they face credible threats of revolution, highlighting how motivation and capacity of opposition groups influence threats, but also how elites’ absorption and interpretation of information signals matters. The Bolshevik Revolution and the formation of Comintern effectively enhanced elites’ perceptions of a credible revolutionary threat, as it affected both the capacity and motivation of labor movements, but also the nature and interpretation of information signals, thus incentivizing policy concessions such as reduced working hours and expanded social transfer programs. We assess our argument by using original qualitative and quantitative data. First, using extensive archival resources, we document a change in perceptions of revolution, but also explicitly strategic policy concessions. Second, we use party- and union representatives at the 1919 Comintern meeting as an indicator of the credibility of the domestic revolutionary threat in cross-national analysis. We find that states facing higher revolutionary threats expanded various social policies to a much greater extent.

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