Formative Context of Western Democracies
The formative context of the North Atlantic democracies can be organized into four clusters of institutional arrangements: work, law, government, and occupational structure.
- The work-organization complex makes a distinction in work between task definers and task executers, with the material rewards concentrated in the task defining jobs.
- The private-rights complex understands the rights of the individual vis-a-vis other individuals and the state. This structure is central to the allocation and control of capital, ensuring all forms of capital distribution and entitlement.
- The government-organization complex is the institutional arrangement to protect the individual from the state, and to prevent those in power from changing the formative context. It establishes a link between safeguards of freedom and the dispersion of powers, e.g. partisan rivalries fail to extend to debates over the fundamental institutions that affect social interactions.
- The occupational-structure complex is a social division of labor characterized by a lack of caste or religious division. It is based on material reward and task defining jobs receiving the highest pay.
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