Does political culture matter for Europeanization? Evidence from the Ottoman Turkish modernization in state-labor relations


AKAN T.

EMPLOYEE RELATIONS, cilt.33, sa.3, ss.221-248, 2011 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 33 Sayı: 3
  • Basım Tarihi: 2011
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1108/01425451111121759
  • Dergi Adı: EMPLOYEE RELATIONS
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.221-248
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Turkey, European Union, State, Labour
  • İstanbul Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır

Özet

Purpose - Contextualizing its argument specifically into the role and impact of the traditional political culture on the process of modernization, this paper aims to examine the "culture matters" approach through the two-century experience of the top-down modernization of the Ottoman-Turkish civilization in the realm of state-labor relations. Design/methodology/approach - The paper makes a comparative analysis of the interplay between the state and craft associations in the Ottoman Empire, and then the state and labor organizations in contemporary Turkey in terms of the influence of the rules, norms and institutions transferred by the bureaucratic elites from Western Europe. Findings - The paper concludes that a substantive democratic setting for the interplay of the state and labor organizations could not be built up without a self-supportive political culture in view of the fact that the process of top-down modernization/Europeanization in the Ottoman-Turkish context has given rise to a never-ending center-periphery dichotomy between both inter-class and intra-class relationships. Originality/value - The paper sheds light on the labor relations part of the Ottoman-Turkish political culture and reveals its impact on the never-ending top-down modernization initiative.