Why don't governments need trade unions anymore? The death of social pacts in Ireland and Italy
- 2 February 2014
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Socio-Economic Review
- Vol. 12 (4), 723-745
- https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwt028
Abstract
During the 1990s, a prominent strategy of economic adjustment to the challenges of competitiveness and budgetary retrenchment among the non-corporatist countries of Europe was the negotiation of social pacts. Since the onset of the great recession and the Eurozone crisis, social pacts have been conspicuous by their absence. Why have unions not been invited into government buildings to negotiate paths of economic adjustment in the countries hardest hit by the crisis? Drawing on empirical experiences from Ireland and Italy—two cases on which much of the social pact literature concentrated—this article attributes the exclusion of unions to their declining legitimacy. Unions in the new European periphery have lost the capacity either to threaten governments with the stick of protest or to seduce policymakers with the carrot of problem-solving. They are now seen as a narrow interest group like any other.Keywords
This publication has 20 references indexed in Scilit:
- A Common Neoliberal TrajectoryPolitics & Society, 2011
- When Are Concerted Reforms Feasible? Explaining the Emergence of Social Pacts in Western EuropeComparative Political Studies, 2010
- Policies and Politics in Social Pacts in EuropeEuropean Journal of Industrial Relations, 2009
- Industrial relations and the welfare state in Italy: Assessing the potential of negotiated changeWest European Politics, 2007
- Policy Concertation in EuropeComparative Political Studies, 2007
- Party Politics and the Reemergence of Social Pacts in Western EuropeComparative Political Studies, 2007
- Social Pacts as Coalitions of the Weak and Moderate: Ireland, Italy and South Korea in Comparative PerspectiveEuropean Journal of Industrial Relations, 2007
- EMU and Labor Market Institutions in EuropeWork and Occupations, 2005
- The Construction of “Democratic” Corporatism in ItalyPolitics & Society, 2002
- Powering, puzzling, and 'pacting': the informational logic of negotiated reformsJournal of European Public Policy, 2002