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Party Competition and the Resilience of Corporatism
Abstract
This article argues that after the Golden Age of capitalism, corporatist methods of policy-making have come to depend on specific modes of party competition. In contrast to previous studies of corporatism, which have argued that corporatism depends on strong social democratic parties, this article suggests that the competition between well-defined left-wing and right-wing ‘blocs’ has become detrimental to corporatism. In countries with mixed governments or traditions of power-sharing, on the other hand, corporatism thrives. These conclusions are based on a comparison of four traditionally corporatist countries – Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland – from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.
... Existing research tends to support the idea that the party-political mechanisms emphasised here are a major determinant of corporatist policymaking in other countries as well, where social democracy may be stronger. For instance, in a comparative analysis of Sweden , Denmark , the Netherlands and Switzerland, Anthonsen and Lindvall (2009) argue that developments in party politics are the main explanatory variable accounting for the persistence or decline of corporatist policymaking. Countries where party systems have evolved towards a bipolar pattern of party competition, such as Sweden, have seen a clear decline in corporatist policymaking, while countries where a tradition of power-sharing and grand-coalitions has persisted, such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland, have witnessed a maintenance of corporatist policymaking. ...
... Pontusson and Swenson (1996) explained this evolution by changes in the preferences of employers, who decided to withdraw from all institutions of corporatist policymaking in the early 1990s in response to a more competitive economic environment which could not be reconciled with centralised wage bargaining. By contrast, Lindvall and Sebring (2005), Anthonsen and Lindvall (2009) and Anthonsen et al. (2010) argue that the decline of Swedish corporatism can be explained by the combination of a more polarised pattern of party competition and persisting party-union ties. Hence, the strength of Swedish social democrats and their close ties with the unions lowered incentives for organised labour to negotiate policy jointly with employers. ...
... These path dependencies are arguably stronger and more difficult to break in corporatist systems, where the integration of privileged interest groups has been institutionalized. Additionally, economic groups may continue to dominate access to routine policy making because tripartite corporatism has been more resilient in Finland (and Denmark) than, for instance, in Sweden (e.g., Arter 2006;Anthonsen & Lindvall 2009). This may be because Finnish governments have long been more ideologically diverse, and in the absence of a bloc model of political competition, interest organizations cannot bypass bargaining with other interest groups by seeking to directly influence their ideologically allied parties in government (Anthonsen & Lindvall 2009). ...
... Additionally, economic groups may continue to dominate access to routine policy making because tripartite corporatism has been more resilient in Finland (and Denmark) than, for instance, in Sweden (e.g., Arter 2006;Anthonsen & Lindvall 2009). This may be because Finnish governments have long been more ideologically diverse, and in the absence of a bloc model of political competition, interest organizations cannot bypass bargaining with other interest groups by seeking to directly influence their ideologically allied parties in government (Anthonsen & Lindvall 2009). ...
While the Nordic countries have a tradition of integrating privileged interest groups into policy making, a number of studies have argued that this Nordic ‘routine corporatism’ has changed over the last decades. Studies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden demonstrate that interest groups are less frequently involved in committees preparing policy, that lobbying of parliament has become more important and that the position of citizen groups has strengthened. However, systematic studies of present‐day Finland are largely missing. This article therefore adds to the literature by focusing on the Finnish case. Drawing on surveys of interest groups and civil servants, the involvement of interest groups in policy making in Finland is assessed and compared with Denmark and the United Kingdom. It is found that: (1) working groups and similar bodies are still very important sites of advocacy; (2) public administration is a more important site of advocacy than parliament or government; (3) economic groups continue to enjoy a particularly privileged position; and (4) resources predict groups’ access to policy making more strongly in Finland than in Denmark or the United Kingdom. These findings imply that routine corporatism persists in Finland to a greater extent than in Denmark. The study augments the existing evidence that corporatism may have adapted to new circumstances rather than being eliminated.
... Existing research tends to support the idea that the party-political mechanisms emphasised here are a major determinant of corporatist policymaking in other countries as well, where social democracy may be stronger. For instance, in a comparative analysis of Sweden , Denmark , the Netherlands and Switzerland, Anthonsen and Lindvall (2009) argue that developments in party politics are the main explanatory variable accounting for the persistence or decline of corporatist policymaking. Countries where party systems have evolved towards a bipolar pattern of party competition, such as Sweden, have seen a clear decline in corporatist policymaking, while countries where a tradition of power-sharing and grand-coalitions has persisted, such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland, have witnessed a maintenance of corporatist policymaking. ...
... Pontusson and Swenson (1996) explained this evolution by changes in the preferences of employers, who decided to withdraw from all institutions of corporatist policymaking in the early 1990s in response to a more competitive economic environment which could not be reconciled with centralised wage bargaining. By contrast, Lindvall and Sebring (2005), Anthonsen and Lindvall (2009) and Anthonsen et al. (2010) argue that the decline of Swedish corporatism can be explained by the combination of a more polarised pattern of party competition and persisting party-union ties. Hence, the strength of Swedish social democrats and their close ties with the unions lowered incentives for organised labour to negotiate policy jointly with employers. ...
Why do governments still negotiate with trade unions and employers in the design of labour market and welfare reforms despite the steady decline of trade union membership almost everywhere in Europe? Social Concertation in Times of Austerity investigates the political underpinnings of social concertation in this new context with a focus on the regulation of labour mobility and unemployment protection in Austria and Switzerland. It shows that the involvement of organised interests in policymaking is a strategy of compromise-building used by governments when they are faced with party-political divisions, or when unpopular reforms are likely to have risky electoral consequences.
... A growing body of literature seeking to explain variation in corporatist concertation has emphasised the role of changes in party politics (Anthonsen & Lindvall 2009;Baccaro & Simoni 2008;Hamann & Kelly 2010). Whereas earlier analyses of corporatism during the Keynesian consensus had pointed to the incumbency of social democratic parties in government as a precondition for corporatist policymaking, this element seems to have lost its pertinence with the loosening of ties between unions and social-democratic parties (Hamann & Kelly 2010, 33;Traxler et al. 2001, 302). ...
... In many ways, our findings support existing research focusing on party politics as the main influence on the choice of governments for corporatist concertation, thereby lending more support to our third hypothesis than to the two rival hypotheses on a possible direct impact of Europeanization (Anthonsen & Lindvall 2009;Hamann & Kelly 2007). Hence, all the instances of corporatist compromises coincide with a form of weakness in terms of low parliamentary support or of coordination problems between major parties within the ruling party coalition. ...
This paper assesses whether changes in government choice for policy concertation with trade unions and employers are better explained by international or domestic factors. We compare patterns of corporatist governance in a strongly Europeanized policy domain (labour migration policy) and in a weakly Europeanised policy domain (social policy) over the last 20 years in Austria and Switzerland. We show that there is no systematic difference in patterns of concertation between the two policy sectors, and that factors linked to party politics play a bigger role in the choice of governments for concertation. If the base of party support for policies is divided, governments are more prone to resort to corporatist concertation as a way to build compromises for potentially controversial or unpopular policies. By contrast, ideologically cohesive majority coalitions are less prone to resort to concertation because they do not need to build compromises outside their base of party support.
... The Netherlands has a more "liberal" version of corporatism than Denmark and Sweden [Katzenstein 1985]; therefore, Dutch literary narratives should express a larger role for markets compared to the Nordic countries. Danish policies enjoyed greater multi-party and cross-class support than Swedish ones, where the Social Democrats drove political innovation; therefore, we should expect to see higher levels of class conflict in Sweden than in Denmark [Anthonsen and Lindvall 2009]. Yet despite differences on many economic and social dimensions (which undoubtedly contribute to the diverse paths toward coordination), the coordinated countries converge on norms of cooperation, attention to social investment and importance of the state. ...
Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have different historical patterns of industrialization, but developed similar patterns of industrial coordination and cooperation. Theories accounting for industrial relations systems (economic structure, power resources, and party/electoral systems) have difficulty accounting for the similarities among these cases. Therefore, we explore the historical depictions of labor appearing in literature to evaluate whether cross-national distinctions in cultural conceptions of labor have some correspondence to distinctions between coordinated and liberal industrial relations systems. We hypothesize that historical literary depictions of labor are associated with the evolution of industrial systems, and apply computational text analyses to large corpora of literary texts. We find that countries (Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands) with coordinated, corporatist industrial relations in the 20th century share similar cultural constructions about labor relations dating back to at least 1770. Literary depictions found in modern coordinated/corporatist countries are significantly different from those found in Britain, a country with liberal/pluralist industrial relations systems. The research has significance for our understanding of the role of culture in the evolution of modern political economies.
... While strong Social democratic party-union ties should lead PRRPs to undermine the power resources of trade unions, we propose that PRRPs have reduced incentives to challenge union power when Social democratic party-union ties are weak. In this context, PRRPs have little reason to fear that trade unions form an unbreakable alliance with Social democratic parties that systematically excludes them (Anthonsen & Lindvall, 2009). As trade unions no longer circumvent open negotiations by lobbying their Social democratic allies directly, they take a more open approach to other parties, including those of the radical right. ...
Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) not only seek to influence public policies with (re-)distributive implications to attract voters; they also try to reshape economic governance to weaken their opponents. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that the institutional reform strategies of PRRPs depend in large part on the degree of Social democratic party–union ties. When organizational ties between centre-left parties and trade unions are strong, PRRPs are protagonists of attacks on institutional union power and unite with centre-right parties in alternating long-term power relationships. By contrast, when Social democratic party–union ties are weak, PRRPs turn into consenters to the centre-right’s institutional reform proposals and act in accordance with short-term electoral and coalitional concerns. We research our argument in two primary case studies of Austria and Denmark, and control for alternative explanations with reviews of the institutional reform agendas pursued by radical right parties in Sweden and Germany.
... This clarity of the options that are presented to the voters should make them more likely to make the effort to monitor incumbent performance and vote accordingly. Mair (1997Mair ( , 2001Mair ( , 2011 provided a theoretical framework on the concept of wholesale and partial alternation, which has been used by a number authors to understand policy outcomes Horvárth, 2012a, 2012b;Green-Pedersen, 2002;Horowitz et al., 2009;Milanovic et al., 2010) and patterns of political cooperation within the political elite (Anthonsen and Lindvall, 2009;Green-Pedersen, 2004;Louwerse et al., 2017;Meyer-Sahling and Veen, 2012;Otjes and Rasmussen, 2017). Yet, this distinction has not played a major role in the study of partyvote relations (but see Otjes andWillumsen, 2019 andPellegata andQuaranta, 2018). ...
Holding the government accountable is a crucial function of elections. The extent to which voters can actually do so depends on the political system. One element that may influence the likelihood that voters hold the government accountable is the difference between wholesale and partial alternation. Prominent political scientists like Mair, Bergman and Strøm and Pellegata and Quaranta propose that in countries with wholesale alternation voters are better able to hold governments accountable because in essence voters have the choice to keep their current government or ‘throw the rascals out’. However, this relationship has not been tested. We examine the relationship between partial and wholesale alternation and retrospective voting in a large-N cross-country study. We show that the association between government satisfaction and vote choice is stronger in countries with wholesale alternation than in systems with partial alternation.
... Our argument about the role of party-union ties is in line with findings from Anthonsen and Lindvall (2009), who observe that labor-inclusive corporatism has remained most stable where party competition is not centered on well-defined ideological blocs and allows for flexible majority building instead. In the next section of the paper we introduce and explain our strategy of researching the proposed theoretical claims empirically. ...
Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) not only seek to influence socioeconomic policies with redistributive implications to attract (working-class) voters; they also try to reshape welfare institutions to entrench themselves stronger in the power structure and weaken their opponents. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that institutional strategies of PRRPs play out differently and vary between institutional adaptability and attack. Where organizational ties between parties of the Left and trade unions are strong, PRRPs attack institutional union power to alternate dominant power structures. Where the link between the political and industrial wing of the labor movement is weaker, PRRPs adapt institutionally and align with trade unions in this type of institutional reform. We research our argument empirically in case studies of Austria and Denmark in particular, and evaluate the broader explanatory power of the argument in comparative reviews of institutional reforms pursued by the radical right parties in Sweden and Germany.
... By the same token, scholars studying Irish incomes policies are more likely to stress state capacity and institutional innovation (Hardiman, 2002) than those focusing on the continuing low degrees of shopfloor collaboration (Gunnigle, 1998). Moreover, parallel dynamics prevail in other countries, such as Sweden, where employer participation in policy concertation proved surprisingly vulnerable to partisan shifts (Anthonsen & Lindvall, 2009), while coordination in the act of production proved more resilient (Lindgren, 2011). ...
Despite recognizing that institutionalized cooperation is central to both business and politics in many advanced, industrialized economies, scholars remain divided over the origins, character, and future of “non-liberal” capitalism. This article seeks to clarify these debates by arguing that different processes of cooperation are governed by distinct logics of collective action and associated with different dynamics of collaboration. For example, coordination, or cooperation in production, is harder to create but more likely to facilitate companies’ upmarket movement. By contrast, concertation, or cooperation in policy making, is more amenable to state intervention but less durable. The analysis is based on detailed case studies of Germany and Ireland, which vary in their relative reliance on concertation and coordination. Selected references to shadow cases – displaying neither or both forms of cooperation – complement the analysis.
... with the result that the Left, broadly conceived, has had the opportunity to block reforms to which it fiercely objects. More recent work has called into question the relevance of corporatist intermediation for more recently (Lindvall and Sebring, 2005; Anthonsen and Lindvall, 2009; Anthonsen, Lindvall and Schmidt-Hansen, 2010). Nonetheless, it remains the case that Sweden has a political environment that has been remarkably agreeable to social democrats over a period of many decades. ...
This paper develops two (mutually compatible) theories that seek to explain when left-wing political parties will adopt marketising, privatising, choice-based schools policies. With partisan competition over societal inequality at the core of both theories, the first argues that the amount of left-wing 'power resources' is an important variable - with left-wing parties 'privatising' when they are strong, not weak. The second emphasises that the credibility of right-wing commitments to maintain redistributive schools spending is important. Where such credibility is available, left-wing parties will not seek to maintain the influence of teachers' unions over school spending, thus liberating them to adopt privatising reforms. Both theories are shown to find support in a comparison of policy-making between England and Sweden since the 1980s. Finally, it is suggested that the new coalition government in the UK may herald the development of a viable party-based commitment mechanism for Conservative-led governments in future. As such, it may indeed be leading the UK to a 'new politics'.
This chapter suggests that one needs to look beyond national-level structures of industrial coordination to grasp how political pacts for vocational education and institutions for business-labor cooperation are being reinvented. Many believe that a revamping of vocational education for the post-industrial economy is necessary both to invest skills in services and to provide education for non-academic youth. The chapter discusses the relationship between industrial relations and vocational training, as well as challenges to the traditional governance mode in the policy spheres. It presents case studies of Denmark, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, which are based on secondary literature, document analysis, and expert interviews. The chapter explores how institutions for industrial coordination help or hinder efforts to renew vocational education for the post-industrial economy. ###
Citation: Martin, C. J., Graf, L. (2019) Industrial Coordination and Vocational Training in the Post-industrial Age. IN Nijhuis, D.O. (Ed.) Business Interests and the Development of the Modern Welfare State. New York, NY, Routledge, 292-313.
Um estudo do conceito de corporativismo enuanto categoria de análise da relação entre empresariado e política no Brasil.
A crucial difference between political systems is the nature of government alternation: that is, whether when a government changes, all parties now in government were previously in opposition (‘wholesale alternation’) or whether just some parties were (‘partial alternation’) (Mair 1997). Bergman and Strøm (2011) suggest that wholesale alternation gives voters a clear choice between alternative governments and allows them to hold the government accountable, while partial alternation is associated with one (centre) party becoming a (near-) permanent government party who can govern with either the parties to its right or to its left. However, this relationship has not been tested. We propose to examine the effect of partial and wholesale alternation on turn-out in a large-N cross-country study, showing that there is an interaction effect between disproportionality and wholesale turn-out. Wholesale decreases turn-out but only when it when disproportionality is high.
Why do some European welfare states protect unemployed and inadequately employed workers ("outsiders") from economic uncertainty better than others? Philip Rathgeb’s study of labor market policy change in three somewhat-similar small states—Austria, Denmark, and Sweden—explores this fundamental question. He does so by examining the distribution of power between trade unions and political parties, attempting to bridge these two lines of research—trade unions and party politics—that, with few exceptions, have advanced without a mutual exchange.
Inclusive trade unions have high political stakes in the protection of outsiders, because they incorporate workers at risk of unemployment into their representational outlook. Yet, the impact of union preferences has declined over time, with a shift in the balance of class power from labor to capital across the Western world. National governments have accordingly prioritized flexibility for employers over the social protection of outsiders. As a result, organized labor can only protect outsiders when governments are reliant on union consent for successful consensus mobilization. When governments have a united majority of seats, on the other hand, they are strong enough to exclude unions. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers calls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments—and thus political parties—to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers. In the end, Rathgeb concludes that the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of organized labor to enhance the social protection of precarious workers.
Advance Praise by Lucio Baccaro, Marius Busemeyer, Jonas Pontusson, and Wolfgang Streeck.
This article seeks to explain to what extent government composition changes in cabinet formations: it examines why some party systems tend to see wholesale turn-over (where all government parties were previously in opposition) and others only see partial turn-over (where some of the government parties were previously in government). This distinction has been described by many prominent political scientists. Yet there is limited research into the underlying causes. This article examines the importance of both party system characteristics and conditions specific to the cabinet formation: it finds that specifically the interaction between number of parties in a party system and their distribution over the political space matters for the level of party turn-over in government.
Public education is critically important to the human capital, social well-being, and economic prosperity of nations. It is also an intensely political realm of public policy that is heavily shaped by power and special interests. Yet political scientists rarely study education, and education researchers rarely study politics. This volume attempts to change that by promoting the development of a coherent, thriving field on the comparative politics of education. As an opening wedge, the authors carry out an 11-nation comparative study of the political role of teachers unions, showing that as education systems everywhere became institutionalized, teachers unions pursued their interests by becoming well-organized, politically active, highly influential - and during the modern era, the main opponents of neoliberal reform. Across diverse nations, the commonalities are striking. The challenge going forward is to expand on this study's scope, theory, and evidence to bring education into the heart of comparative politics.
Many societies use labor market coordination to maximize economic growth and equality, yet employers’ willing cooperation with government and labor is something of a mystery. The Political Construction of Business Interests recounts employers’ struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development. Employers are most likely to support social investments in countries with strong peak business associations, that help members form collective preferences and realize policy goals in labor market negotiations. Politicians, with incentives shaped by governmental structures, took the initiative in association-building and those that created the strongest associations were motivated to evade labor radicalism and to preempt parliamentary democratization. Sweeping in its historical and cross-national reach, the book builds on original archival data, interviews and cross-national quantitative analyses. The research has important implications for the construction of business as a social class and powerful ramifications for equality, welfare state restructuring and social solidarity.
This paper examines unemployment benefit reforms in twenty-five advanced democracies between the middle of the 1980s and the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. The paper’s main argument is that the type of government - coalition or single-party - has an effect on whether cutbacks in social benefits are combined with compensating measures that mitigate the negative effects of the cuts. We show empirically that when cuts in unemployment benefit duration were made by coalition governments, spending on training programs tended to increase, but when cuts in duration were made by single-party governments, training spending tended to decrease. This pattern suggests that coalition governments, but not single-party governments, use compensation mechanisms to build political support for labor market reforms.
A number of recent studies have documented weakening ties between social democratic parties and trade unions. This article is concerned with the effects of weakening party-union ties on policymaking. In many classic studies of corporatism it has been argued that this mode of policymaking depends on strong ties between social democratic parties and trade unions. In this article, we argue, in contrast, that strong party-union ties are potentially detrimental to corporatism, because in a polarized political environment unions may be tempted to exert political influence via political allies instead of bargaining with their counterparts. In order to evaluate this argument empirically, we present a detailed analysis of two countries with strong corporatist traditions (Denmark and Sweden) from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Denmark, Norway and Sweden are still among the most corporatist democracies in the world. Although corporatism has declined in Scandinavia over the last decades, it still exists, albeit at a lower level. Based on comparative and longitudinal data, we argue that this is a consequence of the disruption of some of the prerequisites to corporatist exchange. Neither governments nor the relevant interest groups in Scandinavia control what their exchange partner desires to the same extent as they did during the heyday of corporatism. Despite the involvement of different factors in the three countries, the main pattern is the same. Consequently, the character of state–interest group relations in Scandinavia is not as distinctive as it used to be.
Following a period of almost obsessive academic attention in the 1980s, in the early 1990s the concept of corporatism fell from favor, as its explanatory powers appeared to wane and the Keynesian welfare systems under which it had flourished apparently fell into decline. In the late 1990s, a new interest in corporatism emerged, in line with new patterns of concertation and corporatist behavior in some unexpected places-countries in which the institutional basis for collaborative, bargained methods of policy making and conflict resolution seemed distinctly unpromising. We review the extensive literature on corporatism since the 1970s and consider its applicability in the contemporary period. We argue that an excessively structural-functionalist interpretation of corporatism led many wrongly to predict its demise as a form of policy making, and that an understanding of its persistence and new manifestations today must resurrect and strengthen some early, recently neglected insights into processes of political exchange.
As attention has shifted to the topic of change in organised economies, Finland represents a valuable case study. The nation's leap from paper producer to high technology leader represents a unique opportunity to study restructuring within the confines of an allegedly incremental organised economy. To date, Finland's transformation has been interpreted as a product of sweeping liberal reforms in finance and corporate governance. This article, however, identifies an enduring role for collectively organised economic actors in labour market and technology policies. Cooperation in these arenas did not inhibit restructuring. On the contrary, collaborative technology policies actively facilitated the rapid redistribution of resources to an emerging ICT industry. In exploring the opportunities and constraints associated with these policies, this article not only sheds light on Finland's shift into high technology markets, but also identifies a more flexible role for coordination in the new economy.
This paper investigates the political determinants of corporatist and pluralist employers' associations and reflects on the origins of the varieties of capitalism in the early decades of the 20th century. We hypothesize that proportional, multiparty systems tend to enable employers' associations to develop into social corporatist organizations, whereas nonproportional, two-party systems are conducive to the formation of pluralist associations. Moreover, we suggest that federalism tends to reinforce incentives for pluralist organization. We assess our hypotheses through quantitative analysis of data from 1900 to the 1930s from 16 nations and case studies of the origins of peak employers' associations in Denmark and the United States. Our statistical analysis suggests that proportional, multiparty systems foster, and federalism works against, social corporatist business organization; employers' organization is also greater where the mobilization of labor, traditions of coordination, and economic development are higher. These factors also largely explain pre-World War II patterns of national coordination of capitalism. Case histories of the origins of employers' associations in Denmark and the United States further confirm the causal importance of political factors. Although Danish and American employers had similar interests in creating cooperative national industrial policies, trajectories of associational development were constrained by the structure of party competition, as well as by preindustrial traditions for coordination.
Active labour-market policy is an important tool for governments interested in the promotion of employment. This article explores a topic in the comparative political economy literature in need of more attention: the politics behind the promotion of active labour policies. It is argued here that social democratic governments are often not interested in employment promotion measures; labour is divided into those with secure employment (insiders) and those without (outsiders); it is contended that social democratic governments have strong incentives to pursue labour-market policies that benefit insiders but not outsiders. There are factors, however, that either exacerbate or limit the effects of insider–outsider differences on social democracy. These claims are tested in three ways. First, the interplay of government partisanship and employment protection is explored in the British case. Secondly, the individual preferences assumed in the model are tested with Eurobarometer data. And thirdly, the effects of social democracy on active labour-market policy are analysed using data from sixteen industrialized democracies.
Challenges the conventional wisdom that welfare state builders take their cues solely from labor and other progressive interests. It argues instead that pragmatic social reformers in the U.S. and Sweden looked for support from above as well as below, taking into account capitalists’ interests and preferences in the political process. Legislation associated with the American New Deal and Swedish social democracy was built, consequently, on cross‐class alliances of interest. Capitalists in both countries appreciated the regulatory impact of reformist social and labor legislation. Their interests in such legislation derived from their distinct systems of labor market governance. Thus, new theory and historical evidence in this book illuminate the political conditions for greater equality and security in capitalist societies.
Divided government occurs when the executive fails to enjoy majority support in at least one house of the legislature. To date, the study of divided government has focused almost exclusively on the US. However, divided government occurs much more widely in other presidential systems and is the equivalent of minority government in parliamentary regimes. This book examines the frequency, causes, and management of divided government in a comparative context, identifying the similarities and differences between various countries around the world.
In this article, it is assumed that corporatism consists of various types of institutional arrangements whereby important political-economic decisions are reached via negotiation between, or in consultation with, peak-level representatives of employees and employers (or other interest groups and the state). The article offers an overview of the forty-two prominent or useful indicators of corporatism suggested in the literature. All these indicators are compared, and the correlations among them are examined. The results produced by the various measures in a set of otherwise identical regression analyses of the relationship between corporatism and unemployment show the sensitivity of empirical findings in this field. Students of corporatism have not always paid sufficient attention to the impact of indicator choice on empirical results.
This article describes the development of corporatism in Sweden from the 1970s onwards. We demonstrate that the Swedish case differs a great deal from other small European countries, such as the Netherlands and Sweden's neighbour Denmark, where corporatism is alive and well and often credited with providing for economic success in recent years. We study corporatism indirectly rather than directly, in the sense that we start from public policy changes in labour market policy, pensions, and immigrant policy, and follow the policy-making chain backwards in order to identify the norms, institutions, and actors that have mattered for policy choices, and how they mattered. Our conclusion is that Sweden has not only experienced decorporatisation in terms of formal institutional changes, but also in terms of a decline in the norms regarding social partnership that previously guided policy making and the interaction of interest organisations.
This article discusses the new system of conflict resolution and coordinated wage bargaining introduced in Sweden in 1997. First adopted by agreement between unions and employers in the manufacturing sector, it has been imitated in the public sector and formed the model for legislation in 2000. The author discusses the significance of these developments and locates the Swedish experience in a broader European comparative perspective.
This research Note has two complementary theoretical objectives. First, we shall attempt to place the form of interest representation and the involvement of interest groups in policy formation known as corporatism – or as democratic, societal, liberal or neo-corporatism – in a broader political context: is corporatism systematically linked with other democratic institutions and processes? Secondly, we shall try to fill a gap in the theory of consensus democracy. This theory holds that types of party, electoral, executive and legislative systems occur in distinct clusters, but it fails to link interest group systems to these clusters.
Unions and employers are political actors. Besides defending their interests on the labour market they act in the political arena. In order to weaken the trade unions, neoliberal parties and employers’ organisations have tried to change existing systems in Sweden and elsewhere. Hence, the general questions being asked in this article are: Do Swedish labour market organisations still participate in (i.e. try to influence) public policy–making on a large scale? Are there any substantial differences in the degree to which unions and employers’ organisations participate or in their access and strategies of participation? In this article it is argued that while participation of labour market organisations in the old institutionalised framework has decreased, it has not vanished. Labour market organisations are also very much involved in public policy–making by informally contacting politicians and public servants. The unions have extensive contacts with politicians on all levels, but especially with the Social Democratic Party, while employers’ organisations have more intense contacts with the public administration and public servants. The overall picture being presented in this article is that labour market organisations in Sweden have not at all been left out in the cold. It is clear that Sweden is far from the British situation and still remains similar to its Scandinavian neighbours.
The literature on neo-corporatist agreements in social and labor market policy in the 1990s points to a decline of concertation in European countries with a long-standing tradition of corporatist negotiation. This article identifies a similar trend in Switzerland and argues that three destabilizing factors account for it: 1) retrenchment pressure and ideological polarization prevent compromises; 2) the emergence of new social demands and interests challenges the homogeneity and legitimacy of peak organizations and thus their bargaining power; 3) increasing media coverage tends to open up the traditionally confidential and selective sphere of corporatist negotiation and weakens the social partners’ ability to reach agreements. The impact of these factors on neo-corporatist bargaining is tested in Switzerland, a case where corporatist negotiations used to be particularly decisive in social policy making. Empirical evidence comes from a cross-time comparison of two major social policies: Unemployment insurance and pension reforms in the 1970s and in the 1990s. In the last decade, the main locus of decision-making shifted from the sphere of interest groups to partisan politics. In parliament, the political parties were able to draft bills enjoying wide acceptance thanks to compensations offered to groups particularly vulnerable to new social risks.
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. By focusing on the Irish and Italian cases, it shows that concertation is perfectly compatible with a non-corporatist structure of the interest representation system. Inter- and intra-organizational co-ordination remains important for the viability of concertation. However, it can be achieved, even in relatively fragmented systems like the Irish and the Italian, through alternative mechanisms relying on democracy and discussion. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003.
Surplus Majority Government. A Comparative Study of Italy and Finland
- Jungar
52 Ann-Cathrine Jungar, Surplus Majority Government. A Comparative Study of Italy and Finland, Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2000, pp. 92–102;
The Netherlands in the 1990s. Towards "Flexible Corporatism" in the Polder Model', in Berger and Compston, Policy Concertation and Social Partnership in Western Europe
- Hans Slomp
Gladdish said that the evidence was mixed but suggested that, on balance, there was evidence of general decline of corporatism. See also Paulette Kurzer, Business and Banking
- Ken Gladdish
Rapport fra udredningsudvalget om arbejdsmarkedets strukturproblemer
- Zeuthenudvalget
Wage Inequality and Varieties of Capitalism
- David Rueda
- Jonas Pontusson
When Minority Cabinets Are the Rule and Majority Coalitions the Exception
- Torbjörn Bergman
- Sweden