Description: In State, Labor, Capital, Buchanan argues that state-mediated compromise among economic classes is fundamental to replacing authoritarian rule with democracy. Within this compromise, organized labor becomes a vital part of the transition, and the institutions that foster equitable labor-management bargaining become necessary to workers' acquiescence to bourgeois rule. National labor administrations under new democratic capitalist regimes are therefore of paramount importance. Within the central administration, labor administration is the only branch of the state that is responsible for the ongoing maintenance and reproduction of working-class consent. Using recent efforts to supplant authoritarianism in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay as contrasting examples, Buchanan examines the institutional networks whereby new democracies strive to maintain themselves. In Argentina, despite the revival of organized labor as a political force, the struggle to forge a democratic class compromise has so far failed. In Brazil, party and class strife, economic troubles, entrenched authoritarianism, and employer intransigence have blocked the incorporation of organized workers into the economic system. Uruguay is the exception, where a long tradition of democracy and labor militancy has encouraged compromise and the rebuilding of democratic class relations. Buchanan not only expands our awareness of recent developments in Latin America's Southern Cone: his richly detailed, pathbreaking study encompasses democratic and Marxist theory, political economy, public administration, and comparative labor relations.

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