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Free keywords:
industrial relations, political economy, public policy, trade unions,
tripartite institutions, Europe
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.
