Bob Hancké
Biographic Data
| ID | 275837 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bob Hancké |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bob |
| FAMILY NAME | Hancké |
| SIGNATURE | HANCKÉ B |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3334-231X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 121 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Understanding Political Economy: Capitalism, Democracy and Inequality
This timely book provides a critical discussion of the leading concepts and theories in political economy. Bob Hancké, Toon Van Overbeke and Dustin Voss conduct a historical and thematic review of the evolution of political-economic thought, revolving around the relation between capitalism and democracy.
When does industrial policy fail and when can it succeed? Case studies from Europe
When does industrial policy succeed and fail in advanced economies? Most approaches to these questions concentrate on policy design and state power. Instead, we draw attention to the historical legacies, industrial structures, and institutional arrangements that shape industrial policy outcomes. We use insights from historical institutionalism and international business to develop a relational argument based on two first-order conditions: a criti…
Varieties of just transitions in the European car industry
This article examines the responses and strategies developed by business, unions, and governments to the electric turn in the industry in Germany and France, Europe's main car-producing countries. We concentrate on the role of history and institutions in the determination of adjustment paths. Since institutions reflect specific histories, the electric transition in the industry can take on different forms in different countries. In both countries…
Mister Chips goes to Brussels: On the Pros and Cons of a Semiconductor Policy in the EU
Is making semiconductors in Europe a good idea? With the introduction of the European Chips Act in early 2022, this is no longer an academic question. In this article we evaluate these plans in light of a wider—but remarkably one‐sided—debate on industrial policy in advanced capitalist economies. Instead of focusing on policymakers, as most students of industrial policy have done, we draw attention to two first‐order conditions that determine the…
Crisis and Complementarities: A Comparative Political Economy of Economic Policies after Covid-19
We examine economic policy responses to the COVID-19 induced economic collapse in Germany (a coordinated market economy) and the UK (a liberal market economy). The two countries responded to the symmetric economic shock with very similar furlough and business credit schemes to stabilize the demand and supply sides of the economy. However, since these policies fed into very different political-economic structures in both countries, they produced v…
A Bonfire of the Regulations, or Business as Usual? The UK Labour Market and the Political Economy of Brexit
Employment and labour market regulation initially appeared as one of the solid red lines in the UK 's renegotiation of the country's place in the EU . The basic argument is that the UK 's more deregulated labour market would sit uneasily in the more organised models, based on statutory instruments or collective bargaining, found on the continent. While there is a legitimate problem here, EU employment regulations appear manageable from the point …
Unions, wages and EMU
I am very grateful to Labor History for organising this symposium. I am also deeply honoured by these comments from scholars who I almost invariably encountered first as what I think of as ‘key foo
Comparative Institutional Advantage in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis
Excessive fiscal spending is commonly cited as a root of the current European debt crisis. This article suggests, like others, that the rise of competitiveness imbalances contributing to national imbalances in total borrowing is a better explanation for systemic differences toward Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries’ exposure to market speculation. We identify one driver of this divergence: a country’s capacity to limit sheltered sector w…
Unions, Central Banks, and EMU: Labour Market Institutions and Monetary Integration in Europe
The missing link. Labour unions, central banks and monetary integration in Europe 1
This article examines the problems of the single currency in light of the organization of labour relations in the Member States and their interaction with monetary policies. Continental (western) Europe consists of two very different systems of employment and labour relations, roughly coinciding with ‘coordinated market economies’ in the north-west of the continent, and ‘Mixed Market Economies’ in the south. These differences in employment relati…
Varieties of Capitalism and Business
“Varieties of Capitalism” (VoC) approaches the question of business and state relations from a different angle, which allows for a combination of empirical range and analytical sharpness. Diversity within capitalism follows from the institutional solutions to the perennial information and coordination problems that firms face. Since such institutional solutions come in a limited number of discrete blocks, only a handful of them can be coherent en…
Intelligent Research Design: A Guide for Beginning Researchers in the Social Sciences
This book offers advice to doctoral researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students on how to embark on their research. Based on a decade of teaching early-stage researchers in the social sciences at the LSE and other universities, and written with the central problems of beginning researchers in mind, Bob Hancké guides them through the process of thinking about the links between theory, cases and data, and to do so in a way that hel…
Labour History symposium: Roland Erne, European unions
European Unions: Labor's Quest for a Transnational Democracy, by Roland Erne Ithaca, NY and London, ILR Press, 2008, ISBN 9780801446481 In this erudite and cautiously optimistic book, Roland Erne
Intelligent research design: A Guide for Beginning Researchers in the Social Sciences
Wage inflation and labour unions in EMU
This paper examines different levels of wage moderation in EMU member states since the introduction of the euro. Most arguments examining wage restraint have done so relying on the assumptions that relations between EMU member states are symmetric and that wage-setting systems are similar across sectors within one country. We introduce one innovation to these approaches and develop a second existing one. The paper adopts a dual-sector approach, w…
Wage Bargaining and Comparative Advantage in EMU
This chapter examines the effects of shifts in wage-bargaining systems on the organization of firms in EMU member-states, and argues that the move to coordinated wage bargaining induced by the Maastricht criteria has led firms in EMU member-states to align their product market strategies with the existing institutional framework. Where wage bargaining became (or was) centrally coordinated, firms increasingly pursued high-end product market strate…
Beyond Varieties of Capitalism: Conflict, Contradictions, and Complementarities in the European Economy
Since the early 1990s, Europe's economies have been facing several new challenges: the 1992 single market programme, the collapse of the Berlin wall and eastward enlargement, and monetary unification. Building on the influential Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) perspective, this book critically analyses these developments in the European political economy and their effects on the continental European economies. The chapters include debate about how …
Introduction: Beyond Varieties of Capitalism
This introductory chapter ties together themes running through all the chapters in this volume. It discusses critiques of the Varieties of Capitalism or VoC approach in four areas in which it has proven most vulnerable to criticism, and proposes a framework to address these. First, the chapter analyses the role of political and distributive struggles in generating change and adjustment. Second, it reconsiders the nature and function of complement…
Institutional Change and Political Economy
EMU and Labor Market Institutions in Europe: The Rise and Fall of National Social Pacts
During the 1990s, wage setting increasingly became coordinated in many Member States of the European Union (EU), often through new arrangements involving broad encompassing social pacts between employers, trade unions, and governments striking deals across policy areas from wages to social and employment policies. We argue that the different forms of institutional innovation in wage setting found in the EU depended on the combination of the chara…
Many roads to flexibility: How large firms built autarchic regional production systems in France
This article discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the 'Golden Age', large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 198…
Wage Bargaining, Labour Markets and Macroeconomic Performance in Germany and the Netherlands
Dutch economic performance in the 1990s has drawn envious attention from Germany: unemployment is low (6% in 1997 and falling), economic growth is strong, and its combination of low inflation and small budget deficit should allow it painlessly to meet Maastricht criteria for European Economic and Monetary Union. While similar economic results have also been achieved in the United States, the extent of deregulation implied by this approach has mad…
Trust or Hierarchy? Changing Relationships Between Large and Small Firms in France
The Crisis of National Unions: Belgian Labor in Decline
Technology agreements and industrial relations in Belgium
Belgium has a very developed system of national collective bargaining and as a result, it is one of the few countries with a national technology agreement. An analysis revealed that this agreement was not used very much. This article looks at the use and importance of technology agreements for unions
Comparative Institutional Advantage in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis
Excessive fiscal spending is commonly cited as a root of the current European debt crisis. This article suggests, like others, that the rise of competitiveness imbalances contributing to national imbalances in total borrowing is a better explanation for systemic differences toward Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries’ exposure to market speculation. We identify one driver of this divergence: a country’s capacity to limit sheltered sector w…
EMU and Labor Market Institutions in Europe: The Rise and Fall of National Social Pacts
During the 1990s, wage setting increasingly became coordinated in many Member States of the European Union (EU), often through new arrangements involving broad encompassing social pacts between employers, trade unions, and governments striking deals across policy areas from wages to social and employment policies. We argue that the different forms of institutional innovation in wage setting found in the EU depended on the combination of the chara…
Wage inflation and labour unions in EMU
This paper examines different levels of wage moderation in EMU member states since the introduction of the euro. Most arguments examining wage restraint have done so relying on the assumptions that relations between EMU member states are symmetric and that wage-setting systems are similar across sectors within one country. We introduce one innovation to these approaches and develop a second existing one. The paper adopts a dual-sector approach, w…
Crisis and Complementarities: A Comparative Political Economy of Economic Policies after Covid-19
We examine economic policy responses to the COVID-19 induced economic collapse in Germany (a coordinated market economy) and the UK (a liberal market economy). The two countries responded to the symmetric economic shock with very similar furlough and business credit schemes to stabilize the demand and supply sides of the economy. However, since these policies fed into very different political-economic structures in both countries, they produced v…
Varieties of just transitions in the European car industry
This article examines the responses and strategies developed by business, unions, and governments to the electric turn in the industry in Germany and France, Europe's main car-producing countries. We concentrate on the role of history and institutions in the determination of adjustment paths. Since institutions reflect specific histories, the electric transition in the industry can take on different forms in different countries. In both countries…
The Crisis of National Unions: Belgian Labor in Decline
Many roads to flexibility: How large firms built autarchic regional production systems in France
This article discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the 'Golden Age', large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 198…
A Bonfire of the Regulations, or Business as Usual? The UK Labour Market and the Political Economy of Brexit
Employment and labour market regulation initially appeared as one of the solid red lines in the UK 's renegotiation of the country's place in the EU . The basic argument is that the UK 's more deregulated labour market would sit uneasily in the more organised models, based on statutory instruments or collective bargaining, found on the continent. While there is a legitimate problem here, EU employment regulations appear manageable from the point …
Institutional Change and Political Economy
Technology agreements and industrial relations in Belgium
Belgium has a very developed system of national collective bargaining and as a result, it is one of the few countries with a national technology agreement. An analysis revealed that this agreement was not used very much. This article looks at the use and importance of technology agreements for unions
Technology agreements and industrial relations in Belgium
Belgium has a very developed system of national collective bargaining and as a result, it is one of the few countries with a national technology agreement. An analysis revealed that this agreement was not used very much. This article looks at the use and importance of technology agreements for unions
The Crisis of National Unions: Belgian Labor in Decline
Wage Bargaining, Labour Markets and Macroeconomic Performance in Germany and the Netherlands
Dutch economic performance in the 1990s has drawn envious attention from Germany: unemployment is low (6% in 1997 and falling), economic growth is strong, and its combination of low inflation and small budget deficit should allow it painlessly to meet Maastricht criteria for European Economic and Monetary Union. While similar economic results have also been achieved in the United States, the extent of deregulation implied by this approach has mad…
Trust or Hierarchy? Changing Relationships Between Large and Small Firms in France
Many roads to flexibility: How large firms built autarchic regional production systems in France
This article discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the 'Golden Age', large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 198…
Institutional Change and Political Economy
EMU and Labor Market Institutions in Europe: The Rise and Fall of National Social Pacts
During the 1990s, wage setting increasingly became coordinated in many Member States of the European Union (EU), often through new arrangements involving broad encompassing social pacts between employers, trade unions, and governments striking deals across policy areas from wages to social and employment policies. We argue that the different forms of institutional innovation in wage setting found in the EU depended on the combination of the chara…
Wage Bargaining and Comparative Advantage in EMU
This chapter examines the effects of shifts in wage-bargaining systems on the organization of firms in EMU member-states, and argues that the move to coordinated wage bargaining induced by the Maastricht criteria has led firms in EMU member-states to align their product market strategies with the existing institutional framework. Where wage bargaining became (or was) centrally coordinated, firms increasingly pursued high-end product market strate…
Beyond Varieties of Capitalism: Conflict, Contradictions, and Complementarities in the European Economy
Since the early 1990s, Europe's economies have been facing several new challenges: the 1992 single market programme, the collapse of the Berlin wall and eastward enlargement, and monetary unification. Building on the influential Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) perspective, this book critically analyses these developments in the European political economy and their effects on the continental European economies. The chapters include debate about how …
Introduction: Beyond Varieties of Capitalism
This introductory chapter ties together themes running through all the chapters in this volume. It discusses critiques of the Varieties of Capitalism or VoC approach in four areas in which it has proven most vulnerable to criticism, and proposes a framework to address these. First, the chapter analyses the role of political and distributive struggles in generating change and adjustment. Second, it reconsiders the nature and function of complement…
Intelligent Research Design: A Guide for Beginning Researchers in the Social Sciences
This book offers advice to doctoral researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students on how to embark on their research. Based on a decade of teaching early-stage researchers in the social sciences at the LSE and other universities, and written with the central problems of beginning researchers in mind, Bob Hancké guides them through the process of thinking about the links between theory, cases and data, and to do so in a way that hel…
Labour History symposium: Roland Erne, European unions
European Unions: Labor's Quest for a Transnational Democracy, by Roland Erne Ithaca, NY and London, ILR Press, 2008, ISBN 9780801446481 In this erudite and cautiously optimistic book, Roland Erne
Intelligent research design: A Guide for Beginning Researchers in the Social Sciences
Wage inflation and labour unions in EMU
This paper examines different levels of wage moderation in EMU member states since the introduction of the euro. Most arguments examining wage restraint have done so relying on the assumptions that relations between EMU member states are symmetric and that wage-setting systems are similar across sectors within one country. We introduce one innovation to these approaches and develop a second existing one. The paper adopts a dual-sector approach, w…
Varieties of Capitalism and Business
“Varieties of Capitalism” (VoC) approaches the question of business and state relations from a different angle, which allows for a combination of empirical range and analytical sharpness. Diversity within capitalism follows from the institutional solutions to the perennial information and coordination problems that firms face. Since such institutional solutions come in a limited number of discrete blocks, only a handful of them can be coherent en…
Unions, Central Banks, and EMU: Labour Market Institutions and Monetary Integration in Europe
The missing link. Labour unions, central banks and monetary integration in Europe 1
This article examines the problems of the single currency in light of the organization of labour relations in the Member States and their interaction with monetary policies. Continental (western) Europe consists of two very different systems of employment and labour relations, roughly coinciding with ‘coordinated market economies’ in the north-west of the continent, and ‘Mixed Market Economies’ in the south. These differences in employment relati…
Unions, wages and EMU
I am very grateful to Labor History for organising this symposium. I am also deeply honoured by these comments from scholars who I almost invariably encountered first as what I think of as ‘key foo
Comparative Institutional Advantage in the European Sovereign Debt Crisis
Excessive fiscal spending is commonly cited as a root of the current European debt crisis. This article suggests, like others, that the rise of competitiveness imbalances contributing to national imbalances in total borrowing is a better explanation for systemic differences toward Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries’ exposure to market speculation. We identify one driver of this divergence: a country’s capacity to limit sheltered sector w…
A Bonfire of the Regulations, or Business as Usual? The UK Labour Market and the Political Economy of Brexit
Employment and labour market regulation initially appeared as one of the solid red lines in the UK 's renegotiation of the country's place in the EU . The basic argument is that the UK 's more deregulated labour market would sit uneasily in the more organised models, based on statutory instruments or collective bargaining, found on the continent. While there is a legitimate problem here, EU employment regulations appear manageable from the point …
Mister Chips goes to Brussels: On the Pros and Cons of a Semiconductor Policy in the EU
Is making semiconductors in Europe a good idea? With the introduction of the European Chips Act in early 2022, this is no longer an academic question. In this article we evaluate these plans in light of a wider—but remarkably one‐sided—debate on industrial policy in advanced capitalist economies. Instead of focusing on policymakers, as most students of industrial policy have done, we draw attention to two first‐order conditions that determine the…
Crisis and Complementarities: A Comparative Political Economy of Economic Policies after Covid-19
We examine economic policy responses to the COVID-19 induced economic collapse in Germany (a coordinated market economy) and the UK (a liberal market economy). The two countries responded to the symmetric economic shock with very similar furlough and business credit schemes to stabilize the demand and supply sides of the economy. However, since these policies fed into very different political-economic structures in both countries, they produced v…
Varieties of just transitions in the European car industry
This article examines the responses and strategies developed by business, unions, and governments to the electric turn in the industry in Germany and France, Europe's main car-producing countries. We concentrate on the role of history and institutions in the determination of adjustment paths. Since institutions reflect specific histories, the electric transition in the industry can take on different forms in different countries. In both countries…
Understanding Political Economy: Capitalism, Democracy and Inequality
This timely book provides a critical discussion of the leading concepts and theories in political economy. Bob Hancké, Toon Van Overbeke and Dustin Voss conduct a historical and thematic review of the evolution of political-economic thought, revolving around the relation between capitalism and democracy.
When does industrial policy fail and when can it succeed? Case studies from Europe
When does industrial policy succeed and fail in advanced economies? Most approaches to these questions concentrate on policy design and state power. Instead, we draw attention to the historical legacies, industrial structures, and institutional arrangements that shape industrial policy outcomes. We use insights from historical institutionalism and international business to develop a relational argument based on two first-order conditions: a criti…
Economics (21 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Business (9 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (9 works) · Labour economics (9 works) · Economic system (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · European union (7 works) · Market economy (7 works)