 | Parties, Elections, and Policy Reforms in Western Europe: Voting for Social Pacts Subjects: Economics Finance Business & Industry; Politics & International Relations; Comparative Politics; European Politics; European Union Politics; Government; International Political Economy; International Politics; Economics; Business Management and Accounting; Political Economy; Elections; Governance; Human Resource Management; Social pacts - policy agreements between governments, labor unions and sometimes employer organizations - began to emerge in many countries in the 1980s. The most common explanations for social pacts tend to focus on economic factors, influenced by industrial relations institutions such as highly coordinated collective bargaining. This book presents, and tests, an alternative and complementary explanation highlighting the electoral calculations made by political parties in choosing pacts. Using a dataset covering 16 European countries for the years 1980-2006, as well as eight in-depth country case studies, the authors argue that governments' choice of social pacts or legislation is less influenced by economic problems, but is strongly influenced by electoral competition. Social pacts will be attractive when party leaders perceive them to be helpful in reducing the potential electoral costs of economic adjustment and wage restraint policies. Alternatively, parties may forgo negotiations with social partners and seek to impose such policies unilaterally if they believe that approach will yield electoral gain or minimize electoral costs. By combining the separate literatures on political economy and party politics, the book sheds new light on the dynamics of social pacts in Western Europe. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, economics, political economy, European Studies and comparative politics. Kerstin Hamann is Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida. She is the co-author of Institutions and Democratic Development and Assessment in Political Science. John Kelly is Professor of Industrial Relations, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. His books include Union Organization and Activity and Rethinking Industrial Relations (both published by Routledge). |
