From the 1970s onwards, Britain’s weakened trade unions have attempted a rejuvenation of their orientations and strategies: chiefly in order to appeal to and represent precarity-prone workers in a...Show moreFrom the 1970s onwards, Britain’s weakened trade unions have attempted a rejuvenation of their orientations and strategies: chiefly in order to appeal to and represent precarity-prone workers in a more satisfactory manner than they had before. However, this rejuvenation process has occurred in a piecemeal and uncoordinated manner: orientations have only shifted partially, and certain rejuvenatory strategies have been far from effective. An interwoven process has occurred alongside, and helped necessitate, this attempted rejuvenation: Britain’s urban labour markets have become increasingly ‘ruralised’. That is to say, the British economy has been fundamentally restructured, and urban industrial relations in the ‘New Economy’ have come to increasingly resemble those long found in British agriculture. Britain’s Farmworkers’ Union has had to contend with ‘new economic’ institutional conditions – namely the norms of small-employee firms and interpersonal and/or triangular relations between employers and workers – for an extended period of time. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, from 1970 onwards, the Farmworker’s Union would have utilised those orientations and strategies adopted by Britain’s urban unions during their rejuvenation processes, but in a more systematic, coherent and effective manner, and from an earlier date. To interrogate this assumption I pose the following research question: in terms of form and effectiveness, how differentiated have the orientations and strategies of the Farmworkers’ Union been, with regards to precarity-prone workers, when compared to the wider Trade Union Movement, and why?Show less
In deze scriptie is een ideaalmodel ontwikkeld voor het politiek debat over morele controverses dat nauw aansluit bij de praktijk: het deliberatief democratisch discussiemodel. Op basis van de...Show moreIn deze scriptie is een ideaalmodel ontwikkeld voor het politiek debat over morele controverses dat nauw aansluit bij de praktijk: het deliberatief democratisch discussiemodel. Op basis van de theorie van de politiek filosofen Gutmann en Thompson over deliberatieve democratie is een initieel model ontwikkeld. Dat model is getoetst aan de in de Tweede Kamer gevoerde debatten over een verbod op de onverdoofde rituele slacht en het burgerinitiatief Voltooid Leven. Uitgaande van deze resultaten is het oorspronkelijke model op een aantal punten verbeterd, opdat het beter aansluit bij de parlementaire praktijk. Het uiteindelijke deliberatief democratische discussiemodel is zeer geschikt als normatief model voor het politiek debat over moreel controversiële onderwerpen, daar de gestelde normen haalbaar zijn en door de parlementariërs gedeeld worden.Show less
During the last years of the reign of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany – from 1670 until his death in 1713 – the Florentine court faced the inevitable decline of the Medici dynasty. Cosimo’s zeal...Show moreDuring the last years of the reign of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany – from 1670 until his death in 1713 – the Florentine court faced the inevitable decline of the Medici dynasty. Cosimo’s zeal to stimulate industrial and technological innovations and to revitalize commerce resulted in an enormous expansion of correspondence and interchange between the Tuscan court and Europe in the 1660s. Once he came to power, Cosimo developed an interest in merchants who operated in the largest cities of Europe. Given the fact that the Grand Duke had a great fascination for the Dutch Republic, following his double stay there in 1667/1668 and 1669, the importance of Tuscan merchants in Amsterdam outweighed that of Medici traders in other European capitals. Among the scarce surviving correspondence of seventeenth-century Florentine merchants in the Low Countries, the most interesting may be that of Giovacchino Guasconi. During his tenure in Amsterdam as official agent for the Grand Duke, he wrote on average once a week to the Grand Ducal secretary, Apollonio Bassetti (1631-1699). This thesis explores the important role of Giovacchino Guasconi as intermediary between the cultural centres of Florence and Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, in particular his role as book agent between the well-known Dutch philologist Nicolaas Heinsius and Cosimo III.Show less
