Suchergebnisse

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 study is a conceptual paper which analysis of main development trends.


Findings
Italy's industrial relations in the twenty-first century are characterized by ambivalent features which are the heritage of the past. These are summarized as follows: "collective autonomy" as a classical source of strength for trade unions and employers' organization, on the one hand. On the other hand, a low level of legislative regulation and weak institutionalization, accompanied by little engagement in a generalized "participative-collaborative" model. Due to the instability in the socio-political setting in the twenty-first century, unions and employers encounter growing difficulties to affirm their common points of view and to build up stable institutions that could support cooperation between them. The result is a clear reversal of the assumptions that had formed the classical backdrop of the paradigm of Italy's "political exchange." This paradigm has long influenced the way in which the relationships between employers, trade unions and the state were conceived, especially during 1990s and, to some extent, during 2000s, that is the development of concertative (tripartite) policy making. However, since the end of 2000s, and particularly from 2010s onwards national governments have stated their intention to act independently of the choices made by the unions (and partially the employers). The outcome is the eclipse of concertation. The paper explores how the relationships among the main institutional actors such as the trade unions (and among the unions themselves), the employers, and the state and how politics have evolved, within a dynamic socio-political and economic context. These are the essential factors needed to understand Italy's industrial relations in the twenty-first century.


Originality/value
It shows that understanding the relationship among the main institutional actors such as the trade unions (and among the unions themselves), the employers and the state and their politics is essential to understand the change occurred in contemporary Italy's industrial relations.

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 greatest impact. When participants had to take a position at the outset, opinion change and group influence were least, but there was significant learning, and the deliberative quality was better. These results indicate a potential trade-off between opinion change – which many scholars equate with deliberative success – and good procedural deliberative quality.

Has the strategy of the "external constraint" (voluntarily limiting the country's policy-making discretion by tying it to the European mast) contributed to Italy's stagnation over the past twenty-five years? The existing literature is divided on this question. The dominant interpretation is that Italy's stagnation is due to insufficient liberalization, and that the external constraint has had no negative and even a positive influence. An alternative interpretation emphasizes the demand compression and supply-side effects of the external constraint. Based on three case studies of public debt management, privatization, and labor market policy, this paper reconstructs the process by which the external constraint has affected outcomes. It argues that it has had a negative impact, but more as a necessary condition than as a sufficient one. In other words, it would probably have been possible to manage the external constraint differently to produce better outcomes, but without the external constraint, the stagnation would likely have been less deep.

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 specific skills are associated with greater contract security. Perhaps more importantly, the authors find a strong negative effect of unemployment, particularly on workers cumulating multiple sources of labor market vulnerability, such as young age, low skill, low autonomy, and immigrant status, especially but not exclusively in the Mediterranean countries most affected by the crisis.

Abstract
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 forum, Amable takes a closer look on the nature of 'conflict' as well as the relationship between conflict and institutional change or stability. After stressing the relevance of comparative capitalism in general, Regan also zooms in on the political conflicts in comparative political economy from three different perspectives (electoral politics, organized interest groups and business-state elites), where he finds new avenues, tensions and research agendas are opening up. From a different perspective, Avdagic reviews the broad developments in the field of political economy with respect to the supply and demand side of redistributive policy. Thereafter, Baccaro and Pontusson sketch an alternative 'growth model perspective', which puts demand and distribution at the center of the analysis. Finally, Van der Zwan analyses the usefulness of financialization studies for the study of (comparative) political economy.

Frontmatter -- Index -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Which Road to Development? The Mediterranean Model Revisited -- Part I. Economic Features and Institutional Context of Southern European Countries -- 1. Is There a "Mediterranean" Growth Model? -- 2. States' Performance, Reforms, and Policy Capacity in Southern European Countries -- 3. Which Level of Analysis? Internal versus External Explanations of Eurozone Divergence -- 4. Following Different Paths of Modernization. The Changing Sociocultural Basis of Southern Europe -- Part II. Policies and Processes of Change -- 5. Labor Market (De)Regulation and Wage-Setting Institutions in Mediterranean Capitalism -- 6. Southern European Welfare Systems in Transition -- 7. How to Adjust? Italy and Spain at the Test of Financial Integration and Crisis -- 8. Human Capital Formation, Research and Development, and Innovation -- Conclusion. Mediterranean Capitalism between Change and Continuity -- References -- Contributors -- Index