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Many societies use labor market coordination to maximize economic growth and equality, yet employers' willing cooperation with government and labor is something of a mystery. The Political Construction of Corporate Interests recounts employers' struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development. Employers are most likely to support social investments in countries with strong peak business associations, that help members form collective preferences and realize policy goals in labor market negotiations. Politicians, with incentives shaped by governmental structures, took the initiative in association-building and those that created the strongest associations were motivated to evade labor radicalism and to preempt parliamentary democratization. Sweeping in its historical and cross-national reach, the book builds on original archival data, interviews, and cross-national quantitative analyses. The research has important implications for the construction of business as a social class and powerful ramifications for equality, welfare state restructuring and social solidarity.--

In light of their nineteenth-century political economies, why did poor, agricultural Denmark become a leader in public, mass primary education (1814) and a multiple-track education system that included vocational training, while rich, industrial Britain did not create public, mass schooling until 1870, and embrace a one-track, academic secondary-education system? The author argues that literary narratives shed light on these cross-national differences. Danish narratives imagined education as social investment for a strong society; diverse educational tracks were necessary to meet the varied skills needs of the economy. British narratives portrayed schooling as essential to self-development and to cultivating the ideal individual. The author uses a close reading of texts and computational linguistics analyses of 521 Danish and 562 British works of fiction from 1700 to 1920 to document the different portrayal of education in the two countries. Case studies show that writers are crucial political actors in important reforms and understudied political agents in policy development stories. The method allows the author to evaluate empirically the complex relationship between culture and political outcomes, to falsify cultural claims, and to improve on thin, vague, national cultural arguments. The article shows how literature helps to reconcile the contradictions embedded in diverse models of governance. Literature provides a site for reworking cultural symbols in response to societal struggles over exogenous change, and provides a source of continuity at moments of institutional change.

Baccaro and Pontusson persuasively argue that nations may choose among models of growth strategies, and that each is associated with a distinctive composition of aggregate demand, producer coalitions, and implications for redistribution. This essay considers the political institutions—patterns of industrial relations and public sector employment—that shape national struggles among producer groups and other social forces over diverse growth strategies.

"This paper investigates the political coalitions giving rise to diverse types of interactions between revenue systems and welfare states. It has been widely acknowledged that coordinated economies with larger public sectors have somewhat regressive tax systems, with a heavy reliance on the taxation of consumption and wages over capital and property. Liberal economies, alternatively, have had more progressive tax systems but smaller welfare states. I suggest that the divergence in the mechanisms for representing employers -- through industrial relations and party systems -- helps to explain how different models of taxing and spending develop over the course of the twentieth century. Industrial coordination encourages higher levels of tax consent among employers, by simultaneously expanding employers' support for social programmes and giving employers the leverage to restrict taxation of capital and to push consumption taxes. The paper evaluates the role of employers and industrial coordination in the architecture of tax regimes in Denmark and the USA in the early 1900s and 1960s." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cathie Jo Martin examines the Scandinavian model of strong democratic institutions and cooperative policymaking built on a bedrock of social solidarity. This model, she argues, just might provide the basis for the Nordic nations' recovery from crisis.

National policy-makers vary enormously in their repudiation of liberalism, with a resurgence of government controls and coordination in the Nordic countries. This article questions how new organising principles are adopted in response to fundamental economic transformations, and explores institutional structures underpinning the social relations of production. Institutions defining the social relations of production regulate class coordination within the political, and class conflict within the economic spheres. Variations in capacities for coordination have a critical impact on the ability of nations to adjust their regulatory regimes in response to major economic transformations.

The global financial crisis of 2008 initially seemed to mark the bankruptcy of neoliberal deregulation and a transition to a new era of renewed faith in government, yet the rising fortunes of parties on the right seem to belie this easy lesson. This essay considers the persistence of managed and relatively egalitarian capitalism after the crisis of finance capitalism. I reflection why some societies are more equitable and solidaristic than others, question whether our beliefs about cross-national variation continue to hold true, and ponder how the financial crisis might affect nations' capacities to construct coalitions for social solidarity.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) led the corporate attack on labor organization and government regulation in the early twentieth century. Yet NAM's deep distrust of coordination, in fact, developed years into its organizational life: at its inception, NAM organizers sought mechanisms to coordinate economic and political business activity, and held policy positions that resembled those favored by contemporaneous European manufacturers. Thus, the organization's dramatic shift in policy preferences almost a decade later was something of a sea change: suddenly NAM became committed to laissez-faire liberalism—the antithesis of coordination—and became best-known for its commitment to fighting organized labor.

This is an evaluation of the impact of corporatist & pluralist employers' associations on firms' programmatic participation in active labour-market & social policies in Denmark & Britain. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with randomly-selected companies, it explores whether employers' associations engage differently with their constituent firms in corporatist & pluralist settings, & whether corporatist countries have an advantage in implementing active social policies. Variations in type of employer organization are found to constitute a determinant of cross-national differences in business attitudes towards the welfare state. Membership in a Danish employers' association confers an entirely different set of effects from membership in a British group & associational membership is a significant positive determinant of firm participation in Denmark but not in Britain. Active social policy has been viewed as a growth opportunity in a new issue area by the Danish 'peak' employers' association & its sectoral members. Although this association is losing some control over collective bargaining, its constituent associations have developed other functions, such as creating deliberative forums for managers, especially at the local level. The research also highlights the role of the state in the renegotiation & survival of corporatist institutional arrangements. 7 Tables. Adapted from the source document.