Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation
European Industrial Relations Since the 1970s

This book argues that liberalization of industrial relations has been a universal tendency among European countries over the last thirty-five years.

Lucio Baccaro (Author), Chris Howell (Author)

9781107018723, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 October 2017

268 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'This is an important book for all scholars and practitioners of industrial relations. It includes very detailed and insightful analyses of developments in industrial relations in a number of European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden), but its ambition goes well beyond that.' Roberto Pedersini, Transfer

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 offers a comprehensive description and analysis of what has happened to the institutions that regulate the labor market, as well as the relations between employers, unions, and states in Western Europe since the collapse of the long postwar boom. The primary theoretical goal of this book is to provide a critical examination of some of the central claims of comparative political economy, particularly those involving the role and resilience of national institutions in regulating and managing capitalist political economies.

Introduction
1. Arguing for neoliberal convergence
2. Quantitative analysis of industrial relations change
3. Constructing a liberal market economy: the collapse of collective regulation in Britain
4. State-led liberalization and the transformation of worker representation in France
5. Softening institutions: the liberalization of German industrial relations with Chiara Benassi
6. 'Well dug old mole!' The rise and decline of concessionary corporatism in Italy
7. The conversion of corporatism: re-engineering Swedish industrial relations for a neo-liberal era
8. Actors, institutions and pathways: the liberalization of industrial relations in Western Europe
9. From industrial relations liberalization to the instability of capitalist growth
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB]