Lucio Baccaro
Biographic Data
| ID | 323685 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lucio Baccaro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lucio |
| FAMILY NAME | Baccaro |
| SIGNATURE | BACCARO L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Geneva |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6410-6179 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 623 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Elective affinities
This article conceptualizes growth models as structured sector–demand configurations, extending existing approaches that focus primarily on aggregate demand components. Using OECD input–output data for thirty-four countries across two periods (1995–2007 and 2009–19), we create new measures of growth contributions by aggregate demand component, sector, and their intersections. Combining comparative mapping of selected countries, principal componen…
Dependency or subsidization? An input-output analysis of the interconnectedness of regional growth models in Italy
This article demonstrates the applicability of the growth model framework at the regional level. Focusing on Italy as a paradigmatic case of persistent regional inequalities, we test two theories of center-periphery relations between Northern and Southern Italy: the dependency theory and the subsidization theory. Using EUREGIO regional input-output tables between 2000 and 2007, we decompose the GDP and GDP growth of Italian regions into final dem…
Growth models and voter preferences
Preferences for growth strategies in advanced democracies
While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growth strategies citizens prefer and (3) what shapes their preferences. We address these questions throu…
Operationalizing growth models
We introduce a novel approach to operationalizing growth models. Drawing on the most recent release of OECD Input–Output Tables, we compute the import-adjusted growth contributions of consumption, investment, government expenditures, and exports for sixty-six countries in the years 1995–2007 and 2009–2018, covering not only advanced Western economies but also Central and Eastern European, South-East Asian, and Latin American countries. We find th…
Signaling virtue or vulnerability? The changing impact of EMU on government bond spreads
Do bond-spreads of developed countries behave differently under different exchange-rate regimes? Focusing on the experience of European monetary integration, we find that the impact of exchange-rate regimes on spreads depends on the macroeconomic context. When inflation counted as the greatest risk to bondholdings, Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was advantaged over flexible and fixed exchange rates, because of its in-built inflation-control me…
The Political-Economic Foundations of Export-Led Growth
The chapter provides a reconstruction of the emergence of export-led growth in Germany. Between 1991 and 2019, exports were the most important growth driver, brought about by real undervaluation in the context of an inflexible (since 1999: fixed) exchange rate regime. Real undervaluation is the result of a bargaining regime oriented toward wage moderation, conservative monetary and fiscal policies, strict credit regulation that discourages househ…
Introduction
This introductory essay flashes out the “growth model” perspective and provides a framework for the chapters in the volume. It makes five interrelated arguments. First, existing theoretical frameworks are ill equipped to tackle the politics of growth and stagnation because of their almost exclusive focus on “supply side institutionalism.” Second, political economists need to take macroeconomics more seriously but also be more critical of mainstre…
Diminishing Returns
Over fifty years ago Andrew Shonfeld wrote a book, Modern Capitalism, which initiated a new field of inquiry about ‘comparative capitalism.’ His focus was the politics of the mixed economy and its national variants. At the basis of that politics was not just a concern with ‘who gets what’ in a static sense, but also how the various hybrid forms of capitalism were able to address problems of accumulation and growth more effectively than in previou…
How should we think about modern capitalism? A growth models approach
Strategic interdependence and preferences for debt mutualization in the eurozone
Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of the burden of adjustment. However, this literature neglects that preferences are strategically inter…
Tying Your Hands and Getting Stuck? The European Origins of Italy's Economic Stagnation
The dominant interpretation of Italian economic stagnation in the last decades is that this is due to insufficient liberalisation, but an alternative explanation emphasises the unintended consequences of Italy's strategy of tying itself to the European mast (‘external constraint’). Based on historical reconstructions of three policy areas, public debt management, privatisation, and labour market policy, this paper seeks to adjudicate between thes…
Who wants wage moderation? Trade exposure, export-led growth, and the irrelevance of bargaining structure
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 attitud…
The role of wages in the Eurozone
There are two main political economy explanations of the Eurocrisis. The labor market view regards cross-country differences in wage bargaining institutions as the root cause of the crisis. The finance view, instead, emphasizes cross-border financial flows and downplays labor market institutions. For the first time, we attempt to assess these two explanations jointly. We find that financial flows are better predictors of nominal wage growth than …
Till austerity do us part? A survey experiment on support for the euro in Italy
The COVID-19 pandemic worsened Italy’s fiscal outlook by increasing public debt. If interest rates were to rise, it would become more likely that Italy experiences a financial crisis and requires a European bailout. How does making EU funds conditional on austerity and structural reforms affect Italians’ support for the euro? Based on a novel survey experiment, this article shows that a majority of voters chooses to remain in the euro if a bailou…
Employment relations in Italy
The Italian employment relations system has tended to baffle comparative scholars, who have had a hard time placing it into cross-country classificatory schemes—both those issuing from the literature on corporatism and, more recently, those based on the Varieties of Capitalism literature. Beginning with the early 1990s, though, the situation of Italian employment relations changed dramatically. In the 1990s, the Italian employment relations syste…
A Switch or a Process? Disentangling the Effects of Union Membership on Political Attitudes in Switzerland and the UK
The paper examines the effects of union membership on individual political attitudes using panel data for Swiss and British workers. Considering union membership as an on/off switch (member vs. non‐member), as it is often done, it is only possible to distinguish between a selection effect (unions attract like‐minded individuals) and a molding effect (the experience of membership has a transformational impact on the individual). Exploiting the lon…
New approaches to political economy
The discussion on 'New Approaches to Political Economy (PE)' gives us a state-of-the-art overview of the main theoretical and conceptual developments within the concept of political economy. Thereby, it invites us to broaden our knowledge regarding manifold novel approaches, which make use of more complex methods to study the less stable, less predictable, but faster changing realities of smaller or bigger geographical regions. In this discussion…
Industrial relations in Italy in the twenty-first century
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the developments which have characterized Italy’s industrial relations from post-war Fordism to neo-liberal hegemony and recent crisis, with a particular focus on the major changes occurred in the twenty-first century, especially those concerning concertative (tripartite) policy making between the government, the employers’ organizations and the trade unions. Design/methodology/approach This stud…
Diversified Quality Production 2.0
Journal Article Diversified Quality Production 2.0: on Arndt Sorge and Wolfgang Streeck, 'Diversified quality production re-visited: Its contribution to German socioeconomic performance over time' Get access Lucio Baccaro, Lucio Baccaro Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Virginia Doellgast, Virginia Doellgast Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Tony Edwards, Tony Edwards S…
Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation
This book has both empirical and theoretical goals. The primary empirical goal is to examine the evolution of industrial relations in Western Europe from the end of the 1970s up to the present. Its purpose is to evaluate the extent to which liberalization has taken hold of European industrial relations and institutions through five detailed, chapter-length studies, each focusing on a different country and including quantitative analysis. The book…
Determinants of Indefinite Contracts in Europe
Using individual-level data from the 2010 wave of the European Working Conditions Survey ( ewcs ), and country-level data on unemployment, employment protection legislation and union density for 21 European countries, this paper provides a comprehensive multi-level analysis of the determinants of indefinite employment contracts. The authors find that workers’ autonomy on the job, the intensity of computer use, and the presence of general and spec…
Throwing out the ballast
comparative capitalism, comparative institutional analysis, institutional theory, lean management, national \ninnovation systems, societal effects
Rethinking Comparative Political Economy
This paper develops an analytical approach to comparative political economy that focuses on the relative importance of different components of aggregate demand-in the first instance, exports and household consumption-and dynamic relations among the 'demand drivers' of growth. We illustrate this approach by comparing patterns of economic growth in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom over the period 1994-2007. Our discussion emphasizes t…
International Organizations as Orchestrators
International Organizations as Orchestrators reveals how IOs leverage their limited authority and resources to increase their effectiveness, power, and autonomy from states. By 'orchestrating' intermediaries – including NGOs – IOs can shape and steer global governance without engaging in hard, direct regulation. This volume is organized around a theoretical model that emphasizes voluntary collaboration and support. An outstanding group of scholar…
Rethinking Comparative Political Economy
This paper develops an analytical approach to comparative political economy that focuses on the relative importance of different components of aggregate demand-in the first instance, exports and household consumption-and dynamic relations among the 'demand drivers' of growth. We illustrate this approach by comparing patterns of economic growth in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom over the period 1994-2007. Our discussion emphasizes t…
A Common Neoliberal Trajectory
Based on quantitative indicators for fifteen advanced countries between 1974 and 2005, and case studies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Ireland, this article analyzes the trajectory of institutional change in the industrial relations systems of advanced capitalist societies, with a focus on Western Europe. In contrast to current comparative political economy scholarship, which emphasizes the resilience of national insti…
Policy Concertation in Europe
This article focuses on the European governments' decision to involve unions and employers in the design and implementation of public policy. Based on new measures of the phenomenon, the authors argue that between 1974 and 2003, no convergence on a pluralist model of policy formation is visible. They then use these measures to identify and analyze the clearest cases of adoption or demise of concertation, namely, the contrasting responses of the B…
Throwing out the ballast
comparative capitalism, comparative institutional analysis, institutional theory, lean management, national \ninnovation systems, societal effects
Institutional Determinants of Unemployment in OECD Countries
The view that unemployment is caused by labor market rigidities and should be addressed through systematic institutional deregulation has gained broad currency and has been embraced by national and international policymaking agencies alike. It is unclear, however, whether there really is robust empirical support for such conclusions. This article engages in an econometric analysis comparing several estimators and specifications. It does not find …
New approaches to political economy
The discussion on 'New Approaches to Political Economy (PE)' gives us a state-of-the-art overview of the main theoretical and conceptual developments within the concept of political economy. Thereby, it invites us to broaden our knowledge regarding manifold novel approaches, which make use of more complex methods to study the less stable, less predictable, but faster changing realities of smaller or bigger geographical regions. In this discussion…
Small Differences that Matter
An experiment on the extension of the political rights of foreigners in the Swiss city of Geneva used three different procedural ways to structure deliberation: participants take positions at the outset, do not take positions, and reflect first. Most opinion change occurred when participants did not have to take a position at the outset. However, no learning effects were recorded, the deliberative quality was poor and group influence had the grea…
Organizational Determinants of Wage Moderation
This article contributes to the political economic literature regarding the effects of industrial relations institutions on national economic outcomes. Based on an econometric analysis of the determinants of wage moderation in sixteen industrialized countries between 1974 and 2000, it argues that the organizational characteristics of trade unions have a significant impact on wage dynamics. Controlling for a number of institutional and economic fa…
Till austerity do us part? A survey experiment on support for the euro in Italy
The COVID-19 pandemic worsened Italy’s fiscal outlook by increasing public debt. If interest rates were to rise, it would become more likely that Italy experiences a financial crisis and requires a European bailout. How does making EU funds conditional on austerity and structural reforms affect Italians’ support for the euro? Based on a novel survey experiment, this article shows that a majority of voters chooses to remain in the euro if a bailou…
For Lack of Anything Better? International Organizations and Global Corporate Codes
This paper analyses the two most important international programmes for the voluntary regulation of corporate behaviour: the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations and the UN Global Compact. It argues that international organizations adopted them mostly for reasons of political feasibility: by imposing minimal constraints on constituents the codes circumvented the most pressing problems of political acceptability associated with standard …
Pathology of Path Dependency? The ILO and the Challenge of New Governance
Using archival sources, the authors study strategic and organizational change in the International Labour Organization (ILO) over the last twenty years. They focus specifically on the ILO's efforts to incorporate certain elements of the "new governance" model into its policies and organizational practices, which include the shift from standards expressed as detailed legal norms to "soft law"; the active involvement of civil society organizations …
Labour and the global financial crisis
At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of presentations by Robert Boyer, Colin Crouch, Marino Regini, Paul Marginson, Richard Hyman and Rebecca Gum…
Civil society meets the state
This article discusses the ‘associational democratic’ model of relationship between state and civil society organizations, which recommends devolution of as many regulatory functions as possible to local groups and associations with detailed knowledge of problems and possible solutions, extensive monitoring capacities and the potential to deliberate about generalizable as opposed to purely sectional interests. The goal is to introduce greater dos…
The Construction of 'Democratic' Corporatism in Italy
Based on field research at both the national and local levels, this article reconstructs the emergence of negotiated policy making in Italy in the 1990s. It argues that standard corporatist theory is totally incapable of accounting for the particular organizational mechanisms through which, at critical moments, that is, the moments in which policy change had to be introduced, consensus was mobilized among both middle-level union structures and ra…
Strategic interdependence and preferences for debt mutualization in the eurozone
Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of the burden of adjustment. However, this literature neglects that preferences are strategically inter…
Who wants wage moderation? Trade exposure, export-led growth, and the irrelevance of bargaining structure
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 attitud…
The role of wages in the Eurozone
There are two main political economy explanations of the Eurocrisis. The labor market view regards cross-country differences in wage bargaining institutions as the root cause of the crisis. The finance view, instead, emphasizes cross-border financial flows and downplays labor market institutions. For the first time, we attempt to assess these two explanations jointly. We find that financial flows are better predictors of nominal wage growth than …
Are some negotiators better than others? Individual differences in bargaining outcomes
Tying Your Hands and Getting Stuck? The European Origins of Italy's Economic Stagnation
The dominant interpretation of Italian economic stagnation in the last decades is that this is due to insufficient liberalisation, but an alternative explanation emphasises the unintended consequences of Italy's strategy of tying itself to the European mast (‘external constraint’). Based on historical reconstructions of three policy areas, public debt management, privatisation, and labour market policy, this paper seeks to adjudicate between thes…
Aggregative" and "Deliberative" Decision-Making Procedures
By comparing developments in two southern Italian factories, this article contrasts "aggregative" (vote on alternative options) and "deliberative" (vote preceded by discussion) procedures in trade unions. In one of the plants, the preferences of some of the workers appear to have been changed by deliberation. The process of rational persuasion seems to have required, however, more than sheer circulation of information. Based on this evidence, the…
Diversified Quality Production 2.0
Journal Article Diversified Quality Production 2.0: on Arndt Sorge and Wolfgang Streeck, 'Diversified quality production re-visited: Its contribution to German socioeconomic performance over time' Get access Lucio Baccaro, Lucio Baccaro Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Virginia Doellgast, Virginia Doellgast Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Tony Edwards, Tony Edwards S…
Negotiating the Italian Pension Reform with the Unions
Using field research at both the national and the local levels, the author reconstructs the process that led to pension reform in Italy. This reconstruction becomes the basis for a critical re-examination of corporatist theory, which has recently been challenged by the emergence of social pacts in a host of "unlikely" countries, including Italy. The author argues that the theory's traditional emphasis on hierarchical and internally undemocratic i…
Preferences for growth strategies in advanced democracies
While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growth strategies citizens prefer and (3) what shapes their preferences. We address these questions throu…
Determinants of Indefinite Contracts in Europe
Using individual-level data from the 2010 wave of the European Working Conditions Survey ( ewcs ), and country-level data on unemployment, employment protection legislation and union density for 21 European countries, this paper provides a comprehensive multi-level analysis of the determinants of indefinite employment contracts. The authors find that workers’ autonomy on the job, the intensity of computer use, and the presence of general and spec…
The downside of participatory-deliberative public administration
This article provides an empirically grounded critique of ‘Participatory-Deliberative Public Administration’, based on an in-depth study of three participatory fora in South Africa: the National Economic Development and Labour Council, the Child Labour Intersectoral Group and the South African National AIDS Council. Drawing freely on Habermas' Between Facts and Norms, the article argues that coordination through deliberation is unlikely to occur …
The End of Solidarity? The Decline of Egalitarian Wage Policies in Italy and Sweden
Through an analysis of industrial relations developments in Italy and Sweden - two countries especially committed to egalitarian wage policies - this article argues that wage egalitarianism as it was conceived in the 1960s and 1970s (compression of inter-occupational wage differentials) proved to be a strategic mistake for unions. It brought about fragmentation - involving multiple cleavages between blue- and white-collar workers, skilled and uns…
The Brave New World of European Labor
The Brave New World of European Labor
Chapter 1. European Unions Face the Millennium George Ross and Andrew Martin Chapter 2. Unforgiven: British Trade Unionism in Crisis Chris Howell Chapter 3. Every Which Way But Loose: German Industrial Relations Since 1980 Stephen J. Silvia Chapter 4. Yesterday's Times Are No Longer Modern : Swedish Unions Confront the Double Shift Rianne Mahon Chapter 5. The Hollowing of French Unions: Politics and Industrial Relations After 1981 Anthony Daley C…
"Centralized Collective Bargaining and the Problem of "Compliance
Centralized Collective Bargaining and the Problem of 'Compliance
According to the neo-corporatist approach to the "problem of compliance," worker control over union policy is incompatible with centralized wage regulation, because only associations in which national leaders are insulated from their members are capable of delivering rank-and-file acceptance of wage moderation. This analysis of centralized collective bargaining agreements in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s provides a critical re-examination of the t…
Aggregative" and "Deliberative" Decision-Making Procedures
By comparing developments in two southern Italian factories, this article contrasts "aggregative" (vote on alternative options) and "deliberative" (vote preceded by discussion) procedures in trade unions. In one of the plants, the preferences of some of the workers appear to have been changed by deliberation. The process of rational persuasion seems to have required, however, more than sheer circulation of information. Based on this evidence, the…
Between Hollywood and Moscow
Journal Article Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943–1991 Get access Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943–1991 by Stephen Gundle. Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2001. 269 pp. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $18.95. Lucio Baccaro Lucio Baccaro International Institute for Labour Studies, Geneva Search for other works by this author on: Oxford A…
Negotiating the Italian Pension Reform with the Unions
Using field research at both the national and the local levels, the author reconstructs the process that led to pension reform in Italy. This reconstruction becomes the basis for a critical re-examination of corporatist theory, which has recently been challenged by the emergence of social pacts in a host of "unlikely" countries, including Italy. The author argues that the theory's traditional emphasis on hierarchical and internally undemocratic i…
The Construction of 'Democratic' Corporatism in Italy
Based on field research at both the national and local levels, this article reconstructs the emergence of negotiated policy making in Italy in the 1990s. It argues that standard corporatist theory is totally incapable of accounting for the particular organizational mechanisms through which, at critical moments, that is, the moments in which policy change had to be introduced, consensus was mobilized among both middle-level union structures and ra…
What is Alive and What is Dead in the Theory of Corporatism
The term ‘corporatism’ simultaneously designates a particular interest group structure, characterized by monopolistic, centralized and internally non‐democratic associations, and a particular policy‐making process, also known as ‘concertation’ or ‘social partnership’. This paper argues that structure and process may no longer be closely associated. By focusing on the Irish and Italian cases, it shows that concertation is perfectly compatible with…
Civil society meets the state
This article discusses the ‘associational democratic’ model of relationship between state and civil society organizations, which recommends devolution of as many regulatory functions as possible to local groups and associations with detailed knowledge of problems and possible solutions, extensive monitoring capacities and the potential to deliberate about generalizable as opposed to purely sectional interests. The goal is to introduce greater dos…
Ruth Milkman L.A. Story
Institutional Determinants of Unemployment in OECD Countries
The view that unemployment is caused by labor market rigidities and should be addressed through systematic institutional deregulation has gained broad currency and has been embraced by national and international policymaking agencies alike. It is unclear, however, whether there really is robust empirical support for such conclusions. This article engages in an econometric analysis comparing several estimators and specifications. It does not find …
Are some negotiators better than others? Individual differences in bargaining outcomes
Policy Concertation in Europe
This article focuses on the European governments' decision to involve unions and employers in the design and implementation of public policy. Based on new measures of the phenomenon, the authors argue that between 1974 and 2003, no convergence on a pluralist model of policy formation is visible. They then use these measures to identify and analyze the clearest cases of adoption or demise of concertation, namely, the contrasting responses of the B…
The downside of participatory-deliberative public administration
This article provides an empirically grounded critique of ‘Participatory-Deliberative Public Administration’, based on an in-depth study of three participatory fora in South Africa: the National Economic Development and Labour Council, the Child Labour Intersectoral Group and the South African National AIDS Council. Drawing freely on Habermas' Between Facts and Norms, the article argues that coordination through deliberation is unlikely to occur …
Labour History symposium
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
Organizational Determinants of Wage Moderation
This article contributes to the political economic literature regarding the effects of industrial relations institutions on national economic outcomes. Based on an econometric analysis of the determinants of wage moderation in sixteen industrialized countries between 1974 and 2000, it argues that the organizational characteristics of trade unions have a significant impact on wage dynamics. Controlling for a number of institutional and economic fa…
Labour and the global financial crisis
At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of presentations by Robert Boyer, Colin Crouch, Marino Regini, Paul Marginson, Richard Hyman and Rebecca Gum…
For Lack of Anything Better? International Organizations and Global Corporate Codes
This paper analyses the two most important international programmes for the voluntary regulation of corporate behaviour: the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations and the UN Global Compact. It argues that international organizations adopted them mostly for reasons of political feasibility: by imposing minimal constraints on constituents the codes circumvented the most pressing problems of political acceptability associated with standard …
A Common Neoliberal Trajectory
Based on quantitative indicators for fifteen advanced countries between 1974 and 2005, and case studies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Ireland, this article analyzes the trajectory of institutional change in the industrial relations systems of advanced capitalist societies, with a focus on Western Europe. In contrast to current comparative political economy scholarship, which emphasizes the resilience of national insti…
Political Economy of the Sovereign Debt Crisis
This article makes three interrelated arguments: first, the sovereign debt crisis is more complex than a simple story about fiscally irresponsible governments which now are being forced by international financial markets to tighten their belts. Ultimately, it is the result of a political decision to create a currency union among economically non-homogenous countries without making any provision for the use of democratically legitimated fiscal tra…
Pathology of Path Dependency? The ILO and the Challenge of New Governance
Using archival sources, the authors study strategic and organizational change in the International Labour Organization (ILO) over the last twenty years. They focus specifically on the ILO's efforts to incorporate certain elements of the "new governance" model into its policies and organizational practices, which include the shift from standards expressed as detailed legal norms to "soft law"; the active involvement of civil society organizations …
Similar structures, different outcomes
Until a few years ago, the received wisdom about corporatism was that although it had once been an important institutional alternative to liberal capitalism, it was crumbling everywhere due to the combined effects of globalization, European integration, technological change, and a generalized employer offensive. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that corporatism survived as an institutional structure (at least in European countries), but b…
Small Differences that Matter
An experiment on the extension of the political rights of foreigners in the Swiss city of Geneva used three different procedural ways to structure deliberation: participants take positions at the outset, do not take positions, and reflect first. Most opinion change occurred when participants did not have to take a position at the outset. However, no learning effects were recorded, the deliberative quality was poor and group influence had the grea…
Political science (42 works) · Economics (38 works) · Politics (32 works) · Law (28 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (27 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (19 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Economic system (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Macroeconomics (11 works)