hide
Free keywords:
employers; institutional change; neoliberalism; preferences; varieties of capitalism; welfare state
Abstract:
This article contributes to the debate on employer preferences. It challenges varieties
of capitalism’s argument that manufacturing employers in Coordinated Market
Economies (CMEs) will tend to defend non-liberal institutions because of the comparative
institutional advantage that they provide. It examines Germany and
Sweden, two critical cases in this debate. It is based on interviews with key officials
and an in-depth examination of the Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (INSM)
and Timbro, think-tanks sponsored by German and Swedish employers to shape
public opinion. In line with power resource theory, I find that both German and
Swedish employers have a strong preference for liberalization. In both cases, they responded
to left-wing threats, institutional constraints and situations of ‘crisis’ by
launching a counteroffensive and promoting welfare state reform, labor market flexibility
and deregulation. Employers have used discourse as a power resource to pursue
an aggressive liberalizing agenda and to attack institutions that required active
deregulation on the part of the state. Whether employers in CMEs seek to dismantle
existing institutions altogether or soften and reengineer these institutions from
within, one thing is clear: their use of radical neoliberal discourse is incompatible
with the claim that they defend traditional institutions in any meaningful sense.
