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Postwar Trade-Union Organization and Industrial Relations in Twelve Countries
Abstract
In the early 1980s, many observers, argued that powerful organized economic interests and social democratic parties created successful mixed economies promoting economic growth, full employment, and a modicum of social equality. The present book assembles scholars with formidable expertise in the study of advanced capitalist politics and political economy to reexamine this account from the vantage point of the second half of the 1990s. The authors find that the conventional wisdom no longer adequately reflects the political and economic realities. Advanced democracies have responded in path-dependent fashion to such novel challenges as technological change, intensifying international competition, new social conflict, and the erosion of established patterns of political mobilization. The book rejects, however, the currently widespread expectation that 'internationalization' makes all democracies converge on similar political and economic institutions and power relations. Diversity among capitalist democracies persists, though in a different fashion than in the 'Golden Age' of rapid economic growth after World War II.
... Finally, we explore the impact of bargaining structure. The corporatist literature reviewed above suggests that unions in more coordinated or centralised bargaining structures (Golden et al. 1999;Soskice 1990) are more likely to internalise the negative externalities of wage militancy. If unions' preferences are reflective of the preferences of workers, these corporatist institutions should be associated with lower levels of individual wage dissatisfaction. ...
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 article seeks to fill this void. It examines to what extent trade exposure affects individual attitudes towards wages, and whether bargaining institutions facilitate the internalisation of competitiveness requirements, as suggested by the vast literature on neocorporatism. Surprisingly, no relationship is found between the structure of wage bargaining (more or less coordinated or centralised) and wage dissatisfaction at the individual level. Instead, wage dissatisfaction decreases strongly when workers are individually exposed to trade and countries rely heavily on export-led growth. The findings point to the need to rethink the determinants of wage moderation.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.2024010 .
... Moreover, the mechanisms employed to carry out reform have differed, in turn affecting the outcome. Not only does coordinated collective bargaining persist in many countries (Golden et al., 1999), but there was a widespread revival of concertation and social pacts in the 1990s as the basis for social and economic reforms (Ebbinghaus and Hassel, 2000;Regini and Regalia, 1997;Rhodes, 1997;Royo, 2002). ...
What are the institutional prerequisites for the creation and maintenance of centralized collective bargaining and social pacts? This article compares Greek experience since 1990 with that in other countries, arguing that societies are likely to diverge on how they respond to the issues of changing bargaining structure and tripartite policy-making. While neo-institutionalist approaches, and particularly their ‘varieties of capitalism’ variant, can go a long way in interpreting these diverse responses, they have problems accounting for institutional change. To accomplish this we need a more dynamic understanding of how past institutional arrangements in combination with current tensions over particular issues, and the costs and opportunities presented to actors, give rise to distinctive responses.
... Otherwise, they conclude systematic changes were not great, though there were widespread changes in the balance between employers and unions within the systems, reflecting the changed economic environment. In similar vein, Wallerstein et al., (1997) and Golden et al., (1999) find stability and resilience in industrial relations institutions and no evidence of a general union decline or decentralization in bargaining. Hyman (1992, 1998) present the same picture of essential continuity in national industrial relations systems throughout Europe in the face of pressures for convergence. ...
This paper explores the use of national culture in comparative industrial relations theory to explain the cross-national pattern of industrial relations institutions. A critical review of the existing body of theory argues that it has not adequately explained cross-national differences in the main industrial relations variables. The review also establishes that, with few exceptions, national culture is currently given negligible weight as an explanatory variable. It is argued that a cultural theory of cross-national difference is required. Following a critical assessment of the work of Hofstede, a cultural model is developed based on his definition and specification of culture. Some hypotheses linking Hofstede's dimensions of culture with our industrial relations variables are derived. As an empirical test of the model, industrial relations variables are regressed on Hofstede's cultural indices. National culture is found to be significantly associated with all the major characteristics of industrial relations systems investigated. The paper concludes that national culture is the primary determinant of cross-national variations in industrial relations institutions and that culture is likely to be a force for ongoing diversity in labour market systems.
The causes of the expansion and cross-national variation in the provision of welfare state goods and services are examined. Social democratic governance is by far the most important determinant of the public delivery of services and is one of the most important determinants of the public funding of the provision of welfare state goods and services. Christian democratic governance is an important determinant of public funding of services, but is not related to public delivery. State structure is also an important determinant. Women's labor force participation is an important determinant of the expansion of public social welfare services net of other social, political, and historical factors. The analysis also shows an interactive effect of women's labor force participation and social democratic governance on public delivery of welfare state services. We conclude that public delivery of a wide range of welfare state services is the most distinctive feature of the social democratic welfare state and that this feature is a product of the direct and interactive effects of social democracy and women's mobilization.
As estruturas estatais e corporativistas criadas em diversos países da Europa e da América Latina a partir da década de 1930, não foram apenas consideradas ultrapassadas e carentes de reformas durante a onda neoliberal que se impôs sobre essas mesmas regiões nas décadas de 1980 e 1990, mas vistas, sobretudo, como herança de um passado autoritário e fator de crise e atraso no desenvolvimento econômico de países como Portugal, Espanha, Brasil e Argentina.
Ao contrário do que então diziam muitos economistas e cientistas sociais, as reformas liberais e privatizantes daqueles tempos não representaram um caminho seguro para o desenvolvimento dessas ou de outras nações, o que se mantém ainda hoje como importante desafio para os seus governos. Nesse sentido, portanto, como bem apontam os estudos aqui reunidos, o corporativismo não se define como um modelo de regulação e mediação de interesses estritamente associado aos regimes autoritários ou de tipo fascista do período entreguerras ou como um entrave ao pleno desenvolvimento do capitalismo de mercado no mundo contemporâneo, mas numa forma de regulação e intervenção econômica e social do Estado compatível ou adaptável a diferentes regimes e épocas.
This chapter investigates whether workers in less-developed countries (LDC) are winners or losers in the expanding global economy. This study is distinctive in that it looks beyond the impact of globalization on direct economic benefits to labor (employment and surplus labor) and assesses if workers simultaneously improve their bargaining power in the marketplace. I use a time-series cross-sectional panel data set for 59 developing countries from 1972 to 1997 to demonstrate that the overall impact of globalization on labor has been different in countries at various levels of economic development. These results challenge conventional wisdom by revealing that under conditions of globalization, labor in low-income countries is not necessarily in a better bargaining position despite certain economic gains. In contrast, labor in high-income countries enjoys both greater economic benefits and an improved bargaining position. The absolute “winners” in globalization ultimately comprise a small percentage of the larger labor force in the developing world.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
Although trade union density is the most influential and most commonly used indicator to map trade union strength, comparing between countries and time, the author argues that trade union density is lacking both specificity and comparability. Additionally, many studies on industrial relations neglect developing countries. Therefore, the paper offers a new concept based on a combination of different theoretical approaches that identify determinants of trade union strength involving developing countries. On that basis, the author creates a novel, composite index that is better at capturing trade union strength than previous indices. First evaluations of this collective labour force index, which covers the years 2000 to 2016 in 72 countries, show that it is quite capable of doing so.
A prominent line of research on electoral systems and income redistribution argues that proportional representation (PR) leads to tax-and-transfer policies that benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. This is because PR produces encompassing center-left coalitions that protect the poor and middle classes. Yet countries with PR electoral systems tend to rely heavily on consumption taxes and tax profits lightly, both of which are inconsistent with this expectation. Both policies are regressive and seem to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. This article argues that PR electoral institutions, when combined with trichotomous multipartism, are not as hostile to the rich as commonly believed, and that it is important to understand how electoral and party systems interact with labor market institutions in order to explain the puzzling pattern of taxation that is observed. The author develops a theoretical model and evaluates its empirical implications for a world in which production has become multinational.
This chapter examines the relevance of labor unions from various perspectives. First, the chapter explores the origins of labor unions as crucial organizations for defending labor rights for unionized workers and their role beyond the labor sphere. The concept of union density is defined to measure the relative power and influence of labor unions. Second, fluctuations of union density are observed in a group of 30 OECD countries between 1980 and 2018. A longitudinal analysis of unionization trends in these countries is conducted and the levels of both aggregated and disaggregated union density are examined. Third, the factors accounting for union density decline are classified into three categories: cyclical, structural, and political-institutional factors. This analytical structure helps not only to develop a coherent debate about the most relevant factors explaining union density variations but also to generate a comprehensive profile of the workforce most likely to be unionized.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a ‘return of electoral and coalitional politics’ to political economy research.
Argentina and Uruguay are the only democracies in Latin America (among few in the world) that have developed sustained, state-oriented national and sectoral wage bargaining between employers and unions after 2005. The article defines “segmented neo-corporatism” as a new form of centralized incomes policy in the region that applies to a substantial portion (i.e., registered workers), though not to all the labor force. Drawing on neo-corporatist theory, I explain, first, why only Argentina and Uruguay could consolidate a centralized, national wage policy in the context of the Latin American Left-Turn. Second, I test empirically the degree of state-oriented wage coordination. The study argues that monetary policy deterrence and higher levels of bargaining centralization largely explain the greater capacity of Uruguayan neo-corporatism to govern wage-setting compared with its Argentine counterpart. Finally, the article puts segmented neo-corporatism in comparative perspective in the developing world and draws some theoretical implications.
Introduzione
Da tempo riconosciuto come un elemento caratterizzante delle democrazie industriali avanzate, il welfare state reclama oggi più attenzione che mai. Malgrado l'incremento delle disuguaglianze in molti paesi, le domande di tagli alla spesa sociale si sono intensificate. I tentativi in tale senso hanno provocato un acceso dibattito e diffuse proteste e ciò pone il welfare al centro del dibattito politico e del conflitto sociale.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.
In this chapter we present a comparative overview of the development, structure, organization and membership of European trade unions, based on the fifteen country chapters in Part II. Our aim is to show the broad picture: how did European trade unions develop? What are the main differences in patterns of organization and union structure across countries? How did these differences affect the organization of new social status categories and groups in industrial and post-industrial societies? What were the patterns of change? Did the union systems of Europe converge? What were the broad developments in unionization and growth? What can we expect for the twenty-first century?
Recent studies of macroeconomic management under varying organization of wage/price bargaining and varying degrees of credible monetary conservatism synthesize and extend theory and empirics on central bank independence (CBI) and coordinated wage/price bargaining (CWB). These studies find that the degrees of CBI and CWB interact with each other and with the broader political-economic context (international exposure, sectoral composition, etc.) to structure monetary-policymaker and wage/price-bargainer incentives. The theoretically surprising but empirically supported core implication was that even perfectly credible monetary conservatism has long-run, equilibrium, on-average real effects, even with fully rational expectations, effects that vary depending on the organizational structure of wage/price bargaining. Bargaining structure, conversely, has real effects that vary with the degree of credible conservatism reflected in monetary-policy rules, and, less surprisingly, CBI and CWB also have interactive nominal effects. Some disagreement remained over the precise nature of these interactive effects, but all theory and evidence agree that a single, credibly conservative European monetary policy would have nominal and real effects that depend upon the Europe-wide institutional-structural organization of wage/price bargaining relative to the prior domestic CBI-CWB combination. Indeed, the one specific point of theoretical and empirical agreement suggests that, for many Euro-member countries, monetary delegation to the single, credibly conservative, European Central Bank would generally worsen these bargainer-policymaker interactions. This review closes with a preliminary assessment of those predicted macroeconomic consequences one year after Euro notes and coins replaced twelve national currencies.1
Die deutschen Gewerkschaften verloren in den 90er Jahren massiv Mitglieder. Langfristig bedroht dies ihre Organisation ebenso wie ihre Handlungsund Durchsetzungsfahigkeit gegenüber Staat und Unternehmern. In den 70er Jahren profitierten die Arbeitnehmerverbände in westlichen Demokratien häufig von externen Unterstützungen, wie einem Ausbau des öffentlichen Sektors mit seinen hohen Organisationsquoten oder ‚geborgten‘ Organisationshilfen von Staat und Unternehmern (Streeck 1981). Heute stagniert der Umfang des öffentlichen Sektors, und Unternehmer sowie Politiker sind in der Regel entweder nicht willig oder nicht in der Lage, den Gewerkschaften die Mitgliedergewinnung zu erleichtern. Deshalb bleibt den Arbeitnehmerverbänden nicht viel anderes übrig, als selbst durch geeignete Rekrutierungsstrategien die Mitgliederzahlen zu stabilisieren oder gar zu steigern. Es ergibt sich somit die Frage, mit welchen Mitteln und Programmatiken Arbeitnehmer in den neuen und alten Bundesländern gleichermaßen zum Organisationsbeitritt veranlaßt werden könnten. Der Fokus der Bemühungen muss die Angestelltenschaft2 sein, da diese Beschäftigtengruppen — im Gegensatz zum bisherigen Mitgliederkern der Arbeiter in der Industrie — im Wachsen begriffen sind. Nur wenn die Gewerkschaften stärker als bisher in der Gruppe der Angestellten Mitglieder gewinnen, können sie dem Schicksal entgehen, organisatorische Relikte eines vergehenden Industriezeitalters zu werden.
Observers of social change have been fascinated for a long time by the question of how the employment structure evolves: toward good jobs, bad jobs, or increasing polarization? Three issues are at stake. At the microlevel of single jobs, the concern is with the quality of new employment created. The question raised is to know whether jobs are becoming better paid, more highly skilled, and endowed with greater autonomy. At the macrolevel of social structure, the debate evolves around the question whether occupational change transforms affluent countries into large middle-class societies or, on the contrary, into increasingly divided class societies. The two levels of analysis are bridged by the concern for social mobility. Here, the question is as to whether change in the employment structure allows forthcoming generations to move to more rewarding jobs than those held by their parents – or whether downward mobility is the more likely outcome. The direction of change has then manifest implications for parties’ electoral constituencies and citizens’ political preferences. This chapter strives to shed light on some of these issues by analyzing the pattern of occupational change in Western Europe since 1990. It does so by examining the evolution of the employment structure with large-scale microlevel data for Britain, Denmark, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. The central question is to know what kind of occupations have been expanding and declining over the last two decades: high-paid jobs, low-paid jobs, or both? Our analysis shows that the five countries under study underwent a process of major occupational upgrading. The only ambiguity concerns the question whether the process is clear-cut or has a polarizing twist to it. The labor market created ample opportunities at the high-skilled end of the occupational structure but made perspectives bleak in the lower-middle range of jobs held by clerks and production workers.
We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study
to examine household market inequality, redistribution, and the
relationship between market inequality and redistribution in affluent OECD
countries in the 1980s and 1990s. We observe sizeable increases in market
household inequality in most countries. This development appears to have
been driven largely, though not exclusively, by changes in employment: in
countries with better employment performance, low-earning households
benefited relative to high-earning ones; in nations with poor employment
performance, low-earning households fared worse. In contrast to widespread
rhetoric about the decline of the welfare state, redistribution increased
in most countries during this period, as existing social-welfare programs
compensated for the rise in market inequality. They did so in proportion
to the degree of increase in inequality, producing a very strong positive
association between changes in market inequality and changes in
redistribution. We discuss the relevance of median-voter theory and power
resources theory for understanding differences across countries and
changes over time in the extent of compensatory redistribution. a
This article seeks to elaborate a framework for the study of diversity in forms of labour using Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development (UCD). It argues that labour markets are constituted by systemic processes of capital accumulation and uneven development in the global economy, but that these processes have highly differentiated outcomes in terms of the forms of labour that have historically emerged within and across national boundaries. Exploring some of the neglected elements of different forms of labour, including non-waged labour, the article demonstrates how we might conceptualise the way in which combinations of labour forms exist within any given space of the world economy. Using the examples of both internal and transnational migration, it argues that charting the social and spatial relations of production, and the labouring experiences and forms of worker politics associated with them, is an effective way of understanding the constitution and restructuring of different forms of labour.
The title question of this chapter has several ramifications. Has there been a decline of trade unions? If so, has it produced more freedom in the labour market? What freedom? Whose freedom? Do we witness the loss of an institution that was, or is, important for social integration in advanced capitalist societies? What contribution have the social sciences to make when addressing these questions and the policy issues involved? These questions involve definitions, empirical tendencies, causal relations and moral judgments. What is meant by union decline, freeing of the market, social integration? Are the three - union decline, liberalization, and disintegration - causally related?
The authors propose a synthesis of power resources theory and welfare production regime theory to explain differences in human capital formation across advanced democracies. Emphasizing the mutually reinforcing relation- ships between social insurance, skill formation, and spending on public educa- tion, they distinguish three distinct worlds of human capital formation: one characterized by redistribution and heavy investment in public education and industry-specific and occupation-specific vocational skills; one characterized by high social insurance and vocational training in firm-specific and industry- specific skills but less spending on public education; and one characterized by heavy private investment in general skills but modest spending on public edu- cation and redistribution. They trace the three worlds to historical differences in the organization of capitalism, electoral institutions, and partisan politics, emphasizing the distinct character of political coalition formation underpinning each of the three models. They also discuss the implications for inequality and labor market stratification across time and space.
Research on comparative political economic performance has traditionally followed two separate tracks, one concerned with collective economic gain (growth and efficiency) and the other focused on distribution and redistribution. Cooperative institutions offer a key to understanding cross-national variation among the affluent capitalist democracies in both facets of political economic performance. These institutions cluster along two dimensions: neocorporatism and firm-level cooperation. Pooled time-series analysis for 18 nations over 1960-89 suggests that (1) neocorporatism is a major source of distributive/redistributive policies and outcomes and of several sources of collective gain; (2) firm-level cooperation is a key contributor to economic growth.
This study compares organizational commitment in six western countries: USA, Great Britain, New Zealand, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. The main focus is on the hypothesized existence of conflicting values due to different systems of norms. The assumption made is that the central norms, values, and expectations in any particular work organization, originate in a more general technical/economic system of norms; and that subordinated groups, supporters of left-wing values, those identifying with lower social classes, and union members all espouse other systems of norms, which are not entirely compatible with this technical/economic system, and that these groups are therefore likely to display lower organizational commitment than other groups. The results in this paper do suggest the existence of conflicting norms and that this has implications for organizational commitment. The most noteworthy finding is that organizational commitment correlates with right-wing political values in five of the six countries. Other similarities and differences between the countries are also identified and discussed, and new avenues for further comparative research are suggested.
This article investigates how a particular wage-bargaining institution mitigates pressures from growing international competition and new production techniques and affects the degree of wage inequality growth. The extent to which industry-wide wage minima (wage scales) cover both higher and lower skilled workers affects developments in inequality. A series of cross-sectional time-series analyses are conducted using data from a recent unpublished data set from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which covers 14 OECD countries from 1980 to 2002. The results strongly indicate that the presence of industry-wide wage scales is a key factor in the evolution of wage inequality across OECD countries.
German and Japanese opinion leaders demand a decisive move toward the liberal market model, yet their governments have been slow to act. Why can't Germany and Japan reform? To unravel this puzzle, we must understand how the German and Japanese models of capitalism bind the potential winners from liberal reform, such as competitive manufacturing exporters, to the potential losers, such as workers and protected service industries. Competitive exporters are reluctant to embrace reforms that might undermine valued relationships with workers, financial institutions, and other business partners. Moreover they cannot forge a strong reform coalition because they must work through industry associations and political parties that represent both competitive and protected sectors. As a result, Germany and Japan proceed cautiously with reform; they package delicate compromises, often compensating the potential losers; they design reforms to preserve core institutions; and they seek novel ways to build on the strengths of these models.
This study assesses three explanations for cross-national differences in unionization: Western’s (1997) institutional model, economic explanations based on the business cycle or globalization, and Hechter’s (2004) solidaristic theory. This study features a multilevel analysis of employed workers with the late 1990s World Values surveys of 18 affluent democracies. The analyses generally support the institutional model. Left parties and ghent systems remain influential, though ghent is less robust. Neo-corporatism and wage coordination are insignificant whereas workplace access is the more salient indicator of centralization. Beyond Western’s model, right cabinet significantly weakens unionization. Refuting economic explanations, inflation, unemployment, and economic growth, as well as international trade and investment, do not influence unionization. Consistent with Hechter’s claims, the welfare state reduces unionization but, contradicting his claims, immigration does not undermine unions. Ultimately, this study supports a revised institutional model that supplements Western’s model with right cabinet and the welfare state.
This article analyzes patterns of economic coordination in Estonia and Slovenia, two postsocialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, by using the varieties of capitalism (VOC) framework. The article argues that Estonia and Slovenia are very good examples of liberal and coordinated market economies. Market-based coordination of economic relations predominates in Estonia, whereas Slovenia has highly institutionalized coordination. Industrial relations and wage bargaining arrangements are the main focus, but other areas studied by the VOC literature are briefly considered as well. The article also accounts for the origins of these arrangements by examining the interaction of two sets of factors: economic organization and industrial relations under the old system, on one hand, and strategic policy choices, especially the effects of privatization and monetary policy on formalizing coordination, on the other. The article considers some general implications of this analysis for studying successful postsocialist transition and comparative capitalism.
The article focuses on the following aspects of labour market relations: To what extent do main actors share key opinions? Which actors are considered influential? Who is trusted by whom, and how much? Does communication take the character of deliberation? Since relational data in industrial relations are rare, 71 Swedish organizations involved in industrial relations were asked about each other (representing a total of 770 individuals in key positions in these organizations). Asserted changes as regards power in the Swedish industrial relations system seem overestimated. The state still holds the key positions. The principal labour relations organizations and the Social Democratic Party are also influential, although less than the ministries. All these powerful actors are trusted less over class borders, while the Labour Court and the Conciliators' Office are considered trustworthy, rational 'deliberators'. It is hypothesized that they produce 'the cement of society' that holds the system together.
Central actors in coordinated economies have a dense network of associations for coordinating their actions. However, we lack knowledge of how such relationships are constituted and how the mechanisms of such coordination work. In the present article, we concentrate on the non-market mechanisms of power and trust. We want to know: Are all actors in the industrial relations system connected to each other or are they divided into contending but coherent groups? And in that case, do certain actors playing the role of ‘brokers’ connect these groups? A social network analysis on survey data from Sweden shows that the state and the peak-organisations still hold powerful positions. Simultaneously, when concentrating on reciprocal ties, the organisational borders are in particular bridged over by public sector organisations. However, actors with power are not highly trusted. Instead, other state actors – especially the Labour Court–play an important role as a broker that all parties trust.
This paper addresses the extent to which cross-national variation in institutions in the labour market is influenced by the role of the state. It examines the impact of the partisan political complexion of a country's government over time, measured on a left–right scale. Countries which have experienced more right-wing governments have lower trade union density, more decentralised bargaining, lower collective bargaining coverage and less encompassing initial apprentice-type training programmes. Right-wing governments are also negatively associated with the extent of employee voice. This paper challenges two central contentions of varieties of capitalism theorists. First, left governments are more important than employer coordination in sustaining collective industrial relations systems. Second, national culture is a better predictor of skill formation and job tenure than employer coordination.
Arthur Okun famously argued that “effciency is bought at the cost of inequalities in income and wealth”. Okun's trade-off represents the antithesis to Karl Polanyi's view of the relationship that the more embedded markets are in society, the better the social and economic outcomes they produce. This paper refines both these views. We argue that not all forms of market embeddedness are created equal, and that the relationship between equality and efficiency can be both positive and negative. We show this by examining how different ways of embedding economic activity in society through market regulation produce different combinations of efficiency and equality. We identify empirically three broad patterns: market liberal regulatory frameworks that promote competitive markets without decommodifying institutions; embedded liberal regulations that allow markets to work efficiently, but within the framework of decommodification and equality; and embedded illiberalism, where regulations hinder markets in favor of powerful social groups and where decommodification undermines both efficiency and equality. Okun's trade-off emerges as a special case limited to the English-speaking democracies: other OECD countries tend to exhibit either efficiency and equality together, or inefficiency and inequality together. These findings suggest a corrective to both nave market liberal views of the incompatibility of efficiency and equality, but also to the more sophisticated Varieties of Capitalism framework, which pays insufficient attention to the ways in which markets can be embedded in stable but apparently dysfunctional institutional arrangements.
This paper improves our understanding of critical
junctures, a concept employed in historical institutionalism for exploring
change. However, the concept lacks rigour, weakening our ability to define
critical junctures. Of late, academics have utilized other mechanisms to
identify change in historical institutionalism. Thus, it is within this
context that the critical junctures approach is remoulded through the
specification of standards, hence reducing uncertainty as to what
constitutes a critical juncture. The remoulded approach is employed here
in examining change in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (ICTU)
influence over public policy in 1987.
In recent years, researchers have given much attention to union density decline in industrialized countries. While several have asked whether this decline can be attributed to specific economic, social, or institutional causes, few have provided concrete suggestions about how cross-national studies in this genre can inform efforts that seek to reverse this decline in the United States. This study uses cross-sectional time-series analysis of a pooled sample of 18 OECD countries from 1980 to 2005 to consider the effect of the business cycle, domestic institutions, globalization, and strike activity on union density. We identify interaction with the variable `Traditional Union Density' and utilize findings on corporatism, collective bargaining, globalization, and inflation to make suggestions for those working to reverse union decline in the US.
Much has changed in European political economy over the past 30 years, both in terms of the political economic realities and the scholarly explanations of those realities. National economic policies and policymaking have undergone major transformations, largely in response to the pressures of globalisation and Europeanisation. Such transformations have entailed significant alterations in the role of the state, the importance of business, and the power of labour. In light of these changes in the political economic realities, political economists have shifted their focus over time, first taking labour out of the equation, then bringing the state back in only to devalue it in light of globalisation and Europeanisation before putting the firm front and centre. Only recently has the state been brought back in yet again while labour has made a comeback.
This article revisits the case for paying more attention to agency and strategy in theories of post-communist politics and society. I analyze two trends of major social and political significance in Central and Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2007: the apparent political inconsequentiality of rising unemployment and the causes and consequences of the dramatic decline of organized labour, across a wide variety of political and institutional settings. While prevailing explanations have emphasized institutional and ideological legacies of the communist past, I point to theoretical reasons for why the 'unsettled times' of transformation may have been particularly conducive to elite agency. Looking beyond legacies can shed light on the degree to which elites have channeled the expression of worker' reform grievances towards socially peaceful but, possibly, politically illiberal repertoires of expression. Pointing to past developments across a number of advanced and developing democracies, I place post-communist labour decline within a larger comparative and historical context. Lastly, I indicate how the erosion of labour power has influenced the particular models of democracy and the varieties of capitalism which have been emerging in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989.
The conventional wisdom of domestic politics in the global economy holds that that the globalization of the market economy has spelled the imminent collapse of corporatist bargaining institutions and the corporatist goal of economic equality. This conventional wisdom, however, highlights an interesting puzzle: it was the process of internationalization and economic openness itself that generated corporatist institutions. This study examines whether corporatist institutions are still effective in ensuring the corporatist goal of equality in the ‘global’ economy. Income inequality from the early 1980s to the middle 1990s is used as a measure of institutional effectiveness. It is argued that corporatism, as a form of interest mediation, is a path-dependent institution that generates increasing returns in terms of equality in the most internationalized economies. Results of a panel study of 17 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries indicate that corporatism reduces income inequality and, contrary to the conventional wisdom, income inequality is lowest in the most ‘global’ national economies.
The literature on regime shift suggests that Japan, and perhaps also Switzerland, have experienced a shift in their political systems. In this contribution, it is argued that both political systems underwent considerable change. However, this change did not represent regime shift in terms of a break with the past. Compared to other established democracies in the OECD country group, the changes to various aspects of the political systems have been similar in magnitude and type in both countries. Among OECD members, similar new elements have been layered on to stable cores of pre-existing institutions, actor constellations and policies differing vastly in international comparison. Therewith, most countries moved in comparable directions without significantly changing their relative position within the group of established democracies
Under the density decline and convergence thesis, market forces are gradually eroding union density levels, leading to convergence with the U.S. level throughout the developed world. A key implication is that the U.S. decline has been unavoidable and that little, including labor law reforms, can be done to reverse it. Canada appears to refute this thesis, for it has stronger laws, and density is double that of the United States. Yet (1) Canada's higher public-sector density may mask private-sector declines, (2) any private-sector differences simply may reflect a tendency for Canada to lag the United States, and (3) labor law may not explain U.S.–Canada differences. This article explores these possibilities, finding little support for them. It concludes that a strong case can be made for Canadian-style labor law reforms but that such reforms may not be sufficient by themselves to revitalize the U.S. labor movement.
Coordination through collective bargaining is recognised as an influential determinant of labour market outcomes and macroeconomic performance. This article provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on the subject. What emerges from the review is that it is different types and coverage of bargaining coordination, rather than cross-country variation in trade union density, that matter for economic performance. High levels of bargaining coverage tend to be associated with relatively poor economic performance, but this adverse relationship can be at least mitigated by high levels of bargaining coordination. In the absence of formal bargaining arrangements, economies often develop informal bargaining mechanisms whose effects are similar to those arising from formal bargaining provided they both operate at similar levels of coordination. The consequences of labour market coordination or absence thereof depend on the monetary policy regime as non-accommodating monetary policy can eliminate some of the adverse unemployment consequences otherwise associated with industry-level collective bargaining. Finally, bargaining coordination seems to matter most in times of rapid economic change rather than under more stable conditions. Overall, we conclude that it is the total ‘package’ of (formal and informal) labour market institutions that matters for the performance of the economy rather than unionisation as such or individual aspects of unionism.
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