Lucio Baccaro

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies | MPIFG · Political Economy

This article examines the relationship between national growth models and voters’ economic preferences. We theorise that centre-left voters are cross-pressured between a demand for higher wages and concerns about competitiveness, but the impact varies by growth model: the more a country is export-led, the more the competitiveness motive is internal...

Do bond-spreads of developed countries behave differently under different exchange-rate regimes? Focusing on the experience of European monetary integration, we find that the impact of exchange-rate regimes on spreads depends on the macroeconomic context. When inflation counted as the greatest risk to bondholdings, Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)...

While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growt...

We introduce a novel approach to operationalizing growth models. Drawing on the most recent release of OECD Input–Output Tables, we compute the import-adjusted growth contributions of consumption, investment, government expenditures, and exports for sixty-six countries in the years 1995–2007 and 2009–2018, covering not only advanced Western economi...

Do exchange rate regimes affect the conditions under which developed countries borrow? This paper argues that they do, but their impact on yields depends on the prevailing macroeconomic context. When investors regard inflation as the most relevant risk to bond holdings , monetary union has a distinct advantage over floating and fixed exchange rates...

We present a new methodology for operationalizing growth models based on import-adjusted demand components. Applying the methodology to the latest release of OECD Input-Output Tables, we calculate the growth contributions of consumption, investment, government expenditures, and exports for sixty-six countries in the periods 1995 to 2007 and 2009 to...

Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of...

The dominant interpretation of Italian economic stagnation in the last decades is that this is due to insufficient liberalisation, but an alternative explanation emphasises the unintended consequences of Italy's strategy of tying itself to the European mast (‘external constraint’). Based on historical reconstructions of three policy areas, public d...

Over fifty years ago Andrew Shonfeld wrote a book, Modern Capitalism, which initiated a new field of inquiry about ‘comparative capitalism.’ His focus was the politics of the mixed economy and its national variants. At the basis of that politics was not just a concern with ‘who gets what’ in a static sense, but also how the various hybrid forms of...

Over fifty years ago Andrew Shonfeld wrote a book, Modern Capitalism, which initiated a new field of inquiry about ‘comparative capitalism.’ His focus was the politics of the mixed economy and its national variants. At the basis of that politics was not just a concern with ‘who gets what’ in a static sense, but also how the various hybrid forms of...

Over fifty years ago Andrew Shonfeld wrote a book, Modern Capitalism, which initiated a new field of inquiry about ‘comparative capitalism.’ His focus was the politics of the mixed economy and its national variants. At the basis of that politics was not just a concern with ‘who gets what’ in a static sense, but also how the various hybrid forms of...

Over fifty years ago Andrew Shonfeld wrote a book, Modern Capitalism, which initiated a new field of inquiry about ‘comparative capitalism.’ His focus was the politics of the mixed economy and its national variants. At the basis of that politics was not just a concern with ‘who gets what’ in a static sense, but also how the various hybrid forms of...

This article develops a framework for studying the politics of growth models. These, the authors posit, are sustained by ‘growth coalitions’ based in key sectors. Their members are first and foremost firms and employer associations, but fractions of labor are also included, if their interests do not impair the model’s functionality. There is no gua...

An extensive literature in comparative political economy has examined the determinants of wage militancy and moderation at the country level. So far, however, there has been no attempt to analyse the determinants of wage satisfaction and dissatisfaction at the individual level. Based on two waves of the International Social Survey Programme, this a...

This chapter intends to determine whether the Mediterranean countries—Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain—have a common “growth model” and the features of which, if there is. A growth model can be identified by examining the components of aggregate demand—household consumption, investment, government expenditure, and exports—that account for the gre...

Although the determinants of wage militancy and moderation have been studied extensively by comparative political economists, so far the literature has focused on the macro level of analysis. As a result, there has been no attempt to analyze the determinants of individual-level attitudes towards wages. Based on two waves of the International Social...

Existing research suggests that a “democratic constraint” blocks progress towards debt mutualization in the eurozone: voters in creditor countries fiercely oppose debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries strongly support remaining in the euro, which limits their governments’ bargaining power. However, this literature neglects that preferences...

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened Italy’s fiscal outlook by increasing public debt. If interest rates were to rise, it would become more likely that Italy experiences a financial crisis and requires a European bailout. How does making EU funds conditional on austerity and structural reforms affect Italians’ support for the euro? Based on a novel surve...

There are two main political economy explanations of the Eurocrisis. The labor market view regards cross-country differences in wage bargaining institutions as the root cause of the crisis. The finance view, instead, emphasizes cross-border financial flows and downplays labor market institutions. For the first time, we attempt to assess these two e...

This chapter summarizes and elaborates on the “growth models perspective” proposed by Baccaro and Pontusson (2016). In addition, the chapter updates the previous analysis of post-Fordist growth trajectories in Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK. With growth models operationalized in terms of the contributions of different components of aggregate dem...

The paper examines the effects of union membership on individual political attitudes using panel data for Swiss and British workers. Considering union membership as an on-off switch (member vs. non-member), as it is often done, it is only possible to distinguish between a selection effect (unions attract like-minded individuals) and a molding effec...

This paper seeks to develop a comprehensive analytical framework for studying the politics of economic growth by engaging with three literatures in comparative political economy: the literature on producer-group coalitions, the literature on electoral politics and constrained partisanship and, finally, the literature on the role of ideas. Drawing o...

This paper provides a historical overview of comparative political economy as an interdisciplinary field of study anchored in political science and focused on advanced capitalist states. We argue that this field of inquiry has reached an impasse and that a more sustained engagement with macroeconomics provides a way forward. Against this backdrop,...

This special issue wants to honour the memory of Giulio Regeni, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge who was assassinated while he was conducting field research on independent trade unions in Egypt. This introduction and the following articles focus on the theoretical, empirical and methodological questions at the core of Regeni’s research....

This paper provides an historical overview of comparative political economy as an interdisciplinary field of study anchored in political science and focused on advanced capitalist states. We argue that this field of inquiry has reached an impasse and that a more sustained engagement with macroeconomics provides a way forward. Against this backdrop,...

The preceding article by Arndt Sorge and Wolfgang Streeck entitled ‘Diversified quality production re-visited: Its contribution to German socioeconomic performance over time’ examines the historical dynamics of diversified quality production (DQP). Socio-Economic Review invited a group of leading scholars from different subfields to discuss the pap...

Rethinking Society for the 21st Century - by International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) July 2018

Purpose (mandatory) To reflect on the developments which have characterized Italy’s industrial relations from post-war Fordism to neo-liberal hegemony and recent crisis, with a particular focus on the major changes occurred in 21st century, especially those concerning concertative (tripartite) policy making between the government, the employers’ or...

This book has both empirical and theoretical goals. The primary empirical goal is to examine the evolution of industrial relations in Western Europe from the end of the 1970s up to the present. Its purpose is to evaluate the extent to which liberalization has taken hold of European industrial relations and institutions through five detailed, chapte...

This article proposes a new interpretation of the evolution of German industrial relations focusing on the interaction between macroeconomic dynamics and industrial relations developments and specifically on 'growth models'. It argues that there has been a shift in the German growth model from growth pulled by net exports and consumption simultaneo...

Using individual-level data from the 2010 wave of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), and country-level data on unemployment, employment protection legislation and union density for 21 European countries, this paper provides a comprehensive multi-level analysis of the determinants of indefinite employment contracts. The authors find that...

This paper develops an analytical approach to comparative political economy that focuses on the relative importance of different components of aggregate demand—in the first instance, exports and household consumption—and dynamic relations among the “demand drivers” of growth. We illustrate this approach by comparing patterns of economic growth in G...

The ILO has since its inception been characterized by a particular type of “corporatist” orchestration, which relies extensively, but also exclusively, on trade unions and employer associations as intermediaries. This chapter analyzes the conditions under which an international organization like the ILO – in which particular civil society intermedi...

Based on interviews with the main German actors and on secondary sources, the article examines the recent development of the German political economy, and the German strategy vis-à-vis the Euro zone. Germany is a trading state whose economic growth is strongly export-led. Until the years 1990s, strong institutional rigidities, both in industrial re...

In contrast with recent literature which sees the German model as either a fundamentally resilient model of coordinated capitalism, or as undergoing liberalization only in the peripheral service sectors but not in the core manufacturing ones, in this paper we make two arguments. First, we argue that a fundamental change is taking place in the Germa...

An experiment on the extension of the political rights of foreigners in the Swiss city of Geneva used three different procedural ways to structure deliberation: participants take positions at the outset, do not take positions, and reflect first. Most opinion change occurred when participants did not have to take a position at the outset. However, n...

Until a few years ago, the received wisdom about corporatism was that although it had once been an important institutional alternative to liberal capitalism, it was crumbling everywhere due to the combined effects of globalization, European integration, technological change, and a generalized employer offensive. Against this backdrop, this paper ar...

O paper estuda o caso da recente reforma da Previdência na Itália, ilustrando a possibilidade de uma participação positiva dos sindicatos — tradicionalmente contrários às reformas — no processo de transformação do setor público. Após uma revisão do sistema previdenciário italiano, altamente fragmentado e particularista na opinião dos autores, e o a...

This chapter provides an empirical illustration of the three processes of interest - identification, mobilization, and adjudication - analyzed in the introductory chapter. Specifically, it argues that a political process of discursive democracy - a decision-making process in which leaders and followers engage in debate prior to voting and decisions...

This article makes three interrelated arguments: first, the sovereign debt crisis is more complex than a simple story about fiscally irresponsible governments which now are being forced by international financial markets to tighten their belts. Ultimately, it is the result of a political decision to create a currency union among economically non-ho...

The authors study strategic and organizational change in the International Labour Organization (ILO) over the last twenty years. They focus specifically on the ILO’s efforts to incorporate certain elements of the “new governance” model into its policies and organizational practices, which include the shift from standards expressed as detailed legal...

Using archival sources, the authors study strategic and organizational change in the International Labour Organization (ILO) over the last twenty years. They focus specifically on the ILO’s efforts to incorporate certain elements of the "new governance" model into its policies and organizational practices, which include the shift from standards exp...

Based on quantitative indicators for fifteen advanced countries between 1974 and 2005, and case studies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Ireland, this article analyzes the trajectory of institutional change in the industrial relations systems of advanced capitalist societies, with a focus on Western Europe. In contrast to...

Purpose – Ascertaining the extent to which the generalized decline in union density, as well as the erosion in centralized bargaining structures and developments in other labor institutions, have contributed to rising within-country inequality. Methodology – Econometric analysis of a newly developed dataset combining information on industrial relat...

This paper analyses the two most important international programmes for the voluntary regulation of corporate behaviour: the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations and the UN Global Compact. It argues that international organizations adopted them mostly for reasons of political feasibility: by imposing minimal constraints on constituents th...

Based on field research on worker responses to the 1995 pension reform in Italy and on a nationally-representative survey of workers' attitudes towards the 2007 pension reform, this paper argues that policy preferences are neither exogenous nor fixed but to a large extent shaped by organizational processes taking place within organized interest gro...

Using information collected by the ILO/WB Inventory of policy responses to the financial and economic crisis on 44 countries, this paper identified conditions under which there was a social dialogue response to the financial crisis between 2008 and 2010. For that purpose, they use a particular definition of social dialogue, e.g. the emergence of tr...

This article contributes to the political economic literature regarding the effects of industrial relations institutions on national economic outcomes. Based on an econometric analysis of the determinants of wage moderation in sixteen industrialized countries between 1974 and 2000, it argues that the organizational characteristics of trade unions h...

At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of prese...

At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of prese...

At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of prese...

This article provides an empirically grounded critique of ‘Participatory-Deliberative Public Administration’, based on an in-depth study of three participatory fora in South Africa: the National Economic Development and Labour Council, the Child Labour Intersectoral Group and the South African National AIDS Council. Drawing freely on Habermas' Betw...

This paper provides an empirically-grounded critique of what we refer to as «participatory-deliberative governance» (PDG) theory, and, drawing on Habermas' social theory, articulates an alternative to it. The critique of PDG is based on an in-depth study of three participatory fora in South Africa: the National Economic Development and Labour Counc...

The authors address the long-standing mystery of stable individual differences in negotiation performance, on which intuition and conventional wisdom have clashed with inconsistent empirical findings. The present study used the Social Relations Model to examine individual differences directly via consistency in performance across multiple negotiati...

This article focuses on the European governments' decision to involve unions and employers in the design and implementation of public policy. Based on new measures of the phenomenon, the authors argue that between 1974 and 2003, no convergence on a pluralist model of policy formation is visible. They then use these measures to identify and analyze...

This paper provides an empirically-grounded critique of what we refer to as "participatory-deliberative governance" (PDG) theory, and, drawing on Habermas' social theory, articulates an alternative to it. The critique of PDG is based on an in-depth study of three participatory fora in South Africa: the National Economic Development and Labour Counc...

This article focuses on the European governments' decision to involve unions and employers in the design and implementation of public policy. Based on new measures of the phenomenon, the authors argue that between 1974 and 2003, no convergence on a pluralist model of policy formation is visible. They then use these measures to identify and analyze...

Drawing on a variety of sources and research methods, this article argues that centralized wage bargaining contributed to the “Celtic Tiger” phenomenon by linking wage increases in the dynamic multinational companies sector to wage and productivity increases in the much more sluggish domestic sector of the economy and, in so doing, considerably inc...

Based on multiple sources and research methods, this article argues that social concertation is not a declining institutional arrangement, but a recurrent and, overall, stable (if not growing) feature of European societies. Case-based evidence suggests that, at least in the 1990s, governments engaging in social concertation tend to be electorally w...

The view that unemployment is caused by labor market rigidities and should be addressed through systematic institutional deregulation has gained broad currency and has been embraced by national and international policymaking agencies alike. It is unclear, however, whether there really is robust empirical support for such conclusions. This article e...

This paper explains how text mining was used within the context of a research project on social dialogue regimes, jointly undertaken by the University of Geneva, the University of Lyon 2 and the International Institute of Labour Studies of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The research project, which was made possible through the generou...

This article discusses the ‘associational democratic’ model of relationship between state and civil society organizations, which recommends devolution of as many regulatory functions as possible to local groups and associations with detailed knowledge of problems and possible solutions, extensive monitoring capacities and the potential to deliberat...

This article examines the emergence and institutionalization of social pacts in Ireland, Italy and South Korea. It argues that pacts emerge as deals between a weak government faced with a political–economic crisis and the more moderate sections of the trade union movement, and are institutionalized when (and if) organized employers come to support...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1999. Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-274).

This paper discusses the «associational democratic» model of relationship between state and civil society organizations, which recommends devolution of as many regulatory functions as possible to local groups and associations with detailed knowledge of problems and possible solutions, extensive monitoring capacities, and the potential to deliberate...

The term 'corporatism' simultaneously designates a particular interest group structure, characterized by monopolistic, centralized and internally non-democratic associations, and a particular policy-making process, also known as 'concertation' or 'social partnership'. This paper argues that structure and process may no longer be closely associated....

One important common theme of our five-country research is that all union movements see political engagement as essential in their efforts at revitalization. Specific forms of political action, however, vary according to national context. If unions find or build adequate political and institutional supports, they have less incentive to mobilize the...

This article argues that the Italian confederal unions' decision to engage in national policy-making paid off, even though it implied becoming co-responsible for tough choices, such as wage restraint and pension reform. This engagement was linked to a combination of three factors: the opening up of new opportunities in the political sphere, unity o...

This paper seeks to explain the political renaissance of the Italian confederal unions in the 1990s by linking it to a combination of essentially three factors: the opening up of new opportunities in the political sphere, unity of action among the three major confederations, and a series of organizational reforms that increased the unions' capacity...