Paul Luebke

Symbolic victory and political reality in the southern textile industry: The meaning of the J. P. Stevens settlement for southern labor relations

In October, 1980, J. P. Stevens & Company ended a long, bitter labor-management battle by signing a contract with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). Labor hailed the victory as its long-delayed break-through for workers in the traditionally nonunion, low-wage industries of the South. This paper assesses the importance of the Stevens/ACTWU settlement for Stevens, the textile industry, and the changing Southern economy. When the ACTWU victory is examined in this light, it becomes clear that the impact of the settlement is far more limited than is generally believed.

Who Really Rules?: New Haven and Community Power Reexamined.

Robert A. Dahls Who Governs? is a classic pluralist study which has had an important influence on American social science since the early sixties. Who Really Rules? provides a categorical challenge--empirical, methodological, and theoretical--to Dahls work. Empirically, Domhoffs restudy of New Haven shows through newly discovered documents that Dahl was wrong about the pluralism of New Havens power structure. He also presents the most systematic statement of power structure methodology yet made, a statement that contradicts Dahls methodological claims which have been the prevailing wisdom in American social science for over fifteen years. Finally, Domhoff outlines the national policy planning network through which the big business ruling class dominates urban government. Who Really Rules? is unique in that it makes possible for the first time a dialogue between pluralist and ruling-class views on the basis of studies of the same city by leading exponents of the rival theoretical positions. It is original in that it includes much data not revealed by Dahl. It presents the methodology of power structure research in the most comprehensive fashion yet attempted, and reveals a ruling-class network for urban policy planning that has never before been fully articulated.