Suchergebnisse

Preliminary Material /Jeroen Touwen -- Introduction: A Tension between Coordination and Competition? /Jeroen Touwen -- Growth and Structural Change in the Netherlands and Other OECD Economies /Jeroen Touwen -- At Ease with the Market: Coordination in the Dutch Business System /Jeroen Touwen -- Corporatism and Pragmatism: Coordination in Labor Relations /Jeroen Touwen -- Coordination and Trust: The Dutch Welfare State /Jeroen Touwen -- Economic Policy: In Search of Shared Economic Responsibility /Jeroen Touwen -- Changing Context, Changing Framework /Jeroen Touwen -- Bibliography /Jeroen Touwen -- Index /Jeroen Touwen.

AbstractThis article analyzes the attitudes of Dutch employers toward social policy in the early twentieth century. Recent literature has evolved from an emphasis on power to an emphasis on preferences. Moving away from the traditional view that unions and social democrats forced social laws on employers, recent scholars suggest that firms saw specific advantages in the introduction of social laws. However, I show that the attitudes of Dutch business representatives, rather than seeking these specific advantages, merely reflected a willingness to consult, inspired by their macroeconomic view. Employers expressed the wish to attain an organized form of capitalism and accepted regulated forms of codetermination. Once the consultative platforms were in place, employers pursued strategic goals, such as labor peace and disciplining the unions. This paved the way for accepting welfare state expansion. In sum, mid-twentieth century business interests were strongly oriented toward coordinated capitalism.

This article develops a historical perspective on the coordinated market economy of the Netherlands and explains why it opted forcompartmentalized liberalization. Two related questions are addressed, studying the Netherlands as a case study of a Coordinated Market Economy (CME): to what extent can economic change be accommodatedwithinone "type of capitalism"? And why do specific institutions change while others remain in place? Applying the criteria of "Varieties of Capitalism" I focus on the way the Dutch business system applied nonmarket coordination during the twentieth century. Drawing information from various subfields (business history, labor relations and welfare state studies), I review processes of change and postulate that coordination resulted in the adoption of market-oriented reform in clearly delineated areas. "Varieties of Capitalism" theory addresses the historical roots of institutional arrangements, but historical developments have been underexposed in the comparative capitalism-literature.