Workplace democracy: a European ideal? : discourses and practices about the democratization of work after 1945

在世纪最长的一段时间里，工业民主一直是一场充满活力的运动，它包含了广泛的含义，从内部工会民主到集体谈判，再到车间、企业、工业和国家经济层面的共同决策。在大多数欧洲国家，工会从一开始就在理论上促进和具体管理工作场所民主方面发挥了重要作用。然而，今天的情况看起来不同了。虽然在商业领域也有民主的例子，但等级制的组织形式仍然占主导地位，组织民主在媒体和公共生活中只得到很少的关注。工作场所民主的衰落部分与工会主义的衰落有关，当然也与经济生产体系的变革有关。但这也与几十年来自由主义（相对于社会主义）的政治民主观念的统治有关，这种观念要求严格区分政治和经济领域。然而，近年来有迹象表明，工作场所民主的理想正在获得新的动力。在学术界，我们观察到许多不同学科出现了各种各样的新出版物，如政治理论、社会和政治科学、历史、法律的理论、经济、管理和工作心理学。在政治层面，欧盟刚刚起草了一项新的“关于在工作、资本和经济生活的各个领域建立民主原则”的指令，欧洲工会研究所正在其国家伙伴中积极宣传这一理念。在本项目中，我们想探究这一理念的历史，探索其辉煌的时刻，以及其低迷和接近消失的时刻。我们将通过概念和社会历史的历史镜头，探索这一想法是如何被学术和非学术话语塑造的，该项目将侧重于两个主要的机构行为者：学术界和工会，并将探讨它们之间的互动、相互影响和轨迹。我们的研究对象的性质证明了这种特定的方法是合理的。首先，尽管学术学者在工作场所民主理论化中的作用是无可争议的，但不同学科所发挥的独特作用在很大程度上没有得到充分研究。这不仅是由于跨学科领域之间缺乏交流，而且也是由于对象的巨大变化。其次，工会在实现工作场所民主的社会斗争中发挥了重要但历史上可变的作用。与此同时，除了学术界，工会及其研究机构一直是这一领域最重要的知识生产者，是任何其他社会机构所无法比拟的。第三，工会和学术界不断互动，以多种方式相互影响。

For the longest part of the 20th century, industrial democracy has been a vibrant movement that encompassed a broad spectrum of meanings, from internal union democracy over collective bargaining to co-determination at shop-floor, enterprise, industry and national economic level. Since the beginning trade-unions have played a major role in the theoretical promotion and in the concrete management of workplace democracy in most European countries. Today, however, things look different. While there are instances of democracy in the business landscape, hierarchical forms of organization remain dominant and organizational democracy commands only scant attention in the media and in public life. The decline of workplace democracy is partially tied to that of trade-unionism, and certainly related to the transformations of the economic system of production. But it is also related to the decades-long domination of a liberal (as against social) conception of political democracy which reclaimed a rigid separation between the political and the economic spheres.In the last years there are, however, signs that the ideal of workplace democracy is getting new traction. In the academia, we observe a wide array of new publications appearing in many different disciplines such as political theory, social and political science, history, legal theory, economy, management, and work psychology. At the political level, a new EU Directive “on establishing the principle of democracy at work, in capital, and in every field of economic life” has just been drafted, and the European Trade Union Institute is actively promoting the idea among its national partners.In this project we want to inquire into the history of this idea, exploring its moments of splendor as well as its moments of downturn and near disappearance.We will do it through the historical lenses of conceptual and social history, exploring how this idea has been shaped by academic and non-academic discourses, by social practices, and by social struggles.The project will focus on two main institutional actors: academia and the trade unions, and will explore their interactions, mutual influences and trajectories. This specific approach is justified by the nature of our research object. First, although the role of academic scholars in theorizing workplace democracy is undisputed, the distinctive role played by different academic disciplines is largely understudied. This is due not only to the essential lack of communication across disciplinary fields, but also to the great variability of the object. Second, trade unions have played a major yet historically variable role in social struggles to achieve workplace democracy. At the same time, beside academia, trade unions and their research institutions have been the most important knowledge producer in this field, unrivaled by any other social institution. Third, trade unions and academia have constantly interacted influencing each other in multiple ways.