Bernhard Ebbinghaus

Striking Deals: Concertation in the Reform of Continental European Welfare States

The reform of the welfare state entails changes in interdependent policy fields stretching from social policies to employment and wage policies. These linked policy fields are often governed by varying sets of corporate actors and involve different decision-making procedures. Adaptation in one policy field is often unco-ordinated with other policies, and can work at cross-purposes, produce negative externalities, or fail owing to the lack of supporting conditions. The article has two objectives. First, it argues that the renewed emergence of tripartite concertation is due to the need to co-ordinate policies across policy fields. Second, it evaluates the institutional factors which have facilitated concertation in some cases, but not in others. Using a similar country design, the article compares four continental European countries with similar reform pressures but different reform trajectories: France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

When Less is More: Selection Problems in Large- N and Small- N Cross-National Comparisons

The problem of case selection is a crucial but often overlooked issue in comparative cross-national research. The article discusses methodological shortcomings and potential solutions in selecting cases. All comparative research of social entities, whether quantitative or qualitative, faces the problem of contingency, the fact that the potential pool of cases has been pre-selected by historical and political processes. In large-N cross-national studies the use of inference statistics is problematic since random selection is rarely given and the cases represent a highly stratified set. In small-N case studies, however, the selection of cases is a deliberate choice based on the theory-driven comparative method. The epistemological and methodological problems of both comparative approaches are discussed and evaluated.

Comparing Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy and Political Economy in Europe, Japan and the USA

Estimates of the comparative health of the North Americanand Western European economies and societies have had their fashion cycles -from Servain-Schreibers warnings that Europe was falling behind, rather thancatching up with, American technological leadership in the 1960s, to Europeanexasperation over American trade and budget deficits in the 1970s, to anxietiesover Eurosclerosis in the early 1980s and over the American loss ofinternational competitiveness in the late 1980s. Presently, by all accounts, thesick man is again Europe, with higher unemployment and much lower rates of jobcreation over the last two decades or so. The main problem is a rising level oflong-term unemployment that mainly affects unskilled workers and, in mostcountries, young job seekers with low levels of schooling.This book challenges the popular thesis of a downward trend in the viability of welfare states in competitive market economies. With approaches ranging from historical case studies to cross-national analyses, the contributors explore various aspects of the relationships between welfare states, industrial relations, financial government and production systems. Building upon and combining comparative studies of both the varieties of capitalism and the worlds of welfare state regimes, the book considers issues such as the role of employers and unions in social policy, the interdependencies between financial markets and pension systems, and the current welfare reform process. Comparing Welfare Capitalism sheds new light on the tenuous relationship between social policies and market economies.

Trade Unions' Changing Role: Membership Erosion, Organisational Reform, and Social Partnership in Europe

Trade union movements in Europe are confronting multiple challenges. Among the adversities that union leaders face are pressing organisational problems: membership erosion due to structural changes in the economy and society; unfavourable political and institutional conditions that make organizing even more difficult; and attempts to attract and represent new social groups remain insufficient. ‘Deunionisation’ and its consequences for collective bargaining and for the political clout of union movements has become a problem acknowledged not only in academic but also in union circles. However, these accounts rarely note the intricate relationship between union movements and welfare states, and the potential consequences of ongoing efforts to recalibrate the welfare state, which unions helped expand. Facing decline in membership, representativity, and dues income, we could expect unions to become more dependent on the welfare state in which they are embedded. Where they have institutionalized involvement in statutory workplace representation or play a role in the co-management of social and employment policies, they could gain additional legitimacy and resources. Where unions are weak in membership strength and bargaining power, they may still benefit from the bargaining coverage through better-organised employer organisations or from state support via legal extension of collective agreements to non-organised workers and non-unionised firms. In addition, the welfare state might provide several ‘union securities’, be it through union-friendly labour relations in the public sector or subsidies to collective insurance schemes run by unions. Moreover, as social movements, organised labour may be able to assume a role in the politics of welfare state reform, defending the interests of current and former wage earners against government and employer policies. In recent years, some union movements have been capable of blocking reform efforts, while in other cases, union leaders were willing to negotiate the adaptation of labour market and social policies to the current domestic and international challenges.

Social capital, ‘Ghent’ and workplace contexts matter: Comparing union membership in Europe

Union density still varies considerably across Europe. This cross-national diversity has inspired multiple explanations ranging from institutional to workplace or socio-demographic factors. In this comparative multilevel analysis, we combine personal, workplace and macro-institutional explanations of union membership using the European Social Survey. By controlling for individual factors, we test the cross-national effect of meso- and macro-level variables, in particular workplace representation, establishment size, Ghent unemployment insurance and a society’s social capital. We conclude that all these institutional and social contextual factors matter in explaining differences in union membership.

Introduction: Causes, consequences and cures of union decline

In 2000 the political leaders of the European Union declared that strong economic growth and advance towards a knowledge society, together with a high degree of social cohesion, would be the pre-eminent goals for the subsequent decade. A question never asked was what would happen, and what remedial action would be taken, should the conditions conducive to growth and the knowledge economy conflict with the political and institutional underpinnings of social cohesion. What if strong employment growth turned out to be founded on the destabilization of the standard employment contract, or if the advance towards a knowledge economy brought about a sharp rise in social inequality and polarization between skilled and unskilled workers and between those with and without stable jobs? Would trade unions be willing and able to counteract or attenuate such trends and bridge the differences between the new haves and have-nots? Or would they be marginalized, slowly but irreversibly, together with the stable employment relationships that characterized the mid-20th century? In this special issue we consider the evidence on the causes, consequences and cures of union decline. The contributions stem from an open call for papers from the EQUALSOC network of excellence (economic growth, quality of life and social cohesion), funded by the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme. With financial assistance from the EU, the papers were discussed at two workshops at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim and the

The Siamese Twins: Citizenship Rights, Cleavage Formation, and Party-Union Relations in Western Europe

Prophecies of doom for both working-class party and labor unions have gained popularity in the Western industrial democracies over the last two decades. The “old” Siamese twins, working-class party and labor unions, have a century-long history of their combined struggle to achieve political and industrial citizenship rights for the working class. Both forms of interest representation are seen as facing new challenges if not a crisis due to internal and external changes of both long-term and recent nature. However, despite these prophecies political parties and union movemehts have been differently affected and have responded in dissimilar ways across Western Europe. The Siamese twins, party and unions, as social institutions, their embeddedness in the social structure, and their linkages, were molded at an earlier time with long-term consequences. Hence, we cannot grasp todays political unionism, party-union relations and organized labors capacity for change, if we do not understand the social and political conditions under which the organization of labor interests became institutionalized. An understanding of the origins and causes of union diversity helps us to view the variations in union responses to current challenges.

Die Mitgliederentwicklung deutscher Gewerkschaften im historischen und internationalen Vergleich

Die deutschen Gewerkschaften kommen zunehmend unter existentiellen Druck: Der vereinigungsbedingte Boom von 4 Millionen Mitgliedern im Osten ist innerhalb eines Jahrzehntes zerronnen, und im Westen setzt sich die — seit den 80er-Jahren herrschende — Erosion der Mitgliederbasis fort. Heute sind weniger Arbeitnehmer gewerkschaftlich organisiert als je zuvor in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik. Der Tiefstand der Weimarer Republik ist bereits unterschritten: Nur jeder funfte Arbeitnehmer, der noch nicht im (Vor) Ruhestand ist, zahlt einen Gewerkschaftsbeitrag, wahrend auch Nichtmitglieder von Tarifvertragen profitieren, die von den Gewerkschaften mit den Arbeitgebern ausgehandelt werden.

Der Wandel der Arbeitsbeziehungen in Westeuropaischen Vergleich

Die durch den Nachkriegskonsens gepragten Arbeitsbeziehungen stehen heute vor globalen Herausforderungen und erfahren einen grundlegenden Wandel. Der Klassenkonflikt wurde in den Zeiten des Wirtschaftsaufschwungs von sozialpartnerschaftlichen Institutionen und einem Kollektivvertragswesen auf freiwilliger Basis gepragt. Diese sozialen Institutionen der Regulierung des Verhaltnisses von Kapital und Arbeit sind zwar fest in den westeuropaischen Gesellschaften verankert, erweisen sich aber nun zunehmend ungeeignet, der neuen gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen Situation gerecht zu werden.

European Rigidity Versus American Flexibility? The Institutional Adaptability of Collective Bargaining

According to the unified theory, higher unemployment in Europe as compared to the United States is caused by higher wage rigidity, which, in turn, results from more “inflexible” labor market institutions. Focusing on wage coordination, the empirical analysis shows that the variety of bargaining patterns across European countries and during the period1971to 1998contradicts a simple U.S.-Europe juxtaposition. Although some countries have to cope with excessive wage growth, many others do not trigger higher average wage growth and some coordination forms even show better performance than the United States. Secondly, contrary to the contention of rigidity, the labor market actors in most European countries are responsive to the performance of their bargaining system; they tend to adapt their system if wages seem to overshoot. Hence, the rigidity of Europe thesis does not hold in a more detailed cross-national and long-term analysis of institutional changes in wage bargaining.