Social Pacts in Europe de Sabina Avdagic

Social Pacts in Europe: Emergence, Evolution, and Institutionalization

Sabina Avdagic

Martin Rhodes

Jelle Visser

The result of a four-year long comparative research study centered at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and financed by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme, Social Pacts in Europe presents the first full-length theoretical and comparative empirical study of new social pacts in Europe. Its aim is to bring the level of sophistication achieved in an earlier literature on neo-corporatism to the more contemporary phenomenon of 'social pacting'. The book brings a wide range of complementary theories to bear on the emergence, evolution and institutionalization of pacts, compares systematically a wide range of cases across Europe, and provides in-depth studies of Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia. The book contributes to the scholarly debate on economic adjustment and institutional change in European capitalism by focusing on three inter-related questions: (i) what explains national variation in reliance on social pacts; (ii) what determines the outcomes of individual pact negotiations; and (iii) under what conditions are pacts repeated and become regular features of socio-economic governance? The book's theoretical innovations include a novel application of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) to help explain national differences in social pact adoption; the application of a game theoretic approach to explain social pact emergence; and a reinterpretation of traditional neo-corporatist and new institutionalist theory to help understand social pact consolidation and institutionalization.

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Notă biografică

Sabina Avdagic, Research Council UK Academic Fellow in the Department of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. Soon to be fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst and a DAAD visiting professor at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. Previously she has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a PhD in Political Science and an MA in International Relations from Central European University, Budapest, and a BA in economics from the of University of Zagreb. Research interests include comparative labour relations and processes of institutional change in democratic capitalism. Her current research focuses on the causes and effects of national variation in the strictness of employment protection legislation in Europe.Martin Rhodes is Professor of Comparative Political Economy and PhD Programme Co-Director at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Colorado. Until 2006 he was Professor of Public Policy, Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute (EUI), Florence, and Research Director of the NEWGOV Research Consortium, EUI (2004-2005). From 1995-1999 he was Research Professor at the EUI's Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. From 1989 to 1996 he was Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, University of Manchester, and prior to that Lecturer in Politics at the University of Salford (1985-1988) and Visiting Lecturer, Department of Government, London School of Economics (1986-1988). He has also been a consultant to the European Commission, for The Economist Intelligence Unit, London and for Oxford Analytica. He was co-editor (and co-founder), of South European Society and Politics (1995-1999).Jelle Visser is professor of empirical sociology and chair of sociology of labour and organization at the University of Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2010 he directed the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS), an interdisciplinary centre for research and graduate teaching at the University of Amsterdam, with participation from economics, sociology, psychology, law and occupational health. Previously he held teaching and research positions and fellowships at the European University Institute, the University of Mannheim, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stanford University and Oxford University, and worked as consultant to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Commission and the International Labour Organization. He is the (co-) author of numerous books and some 100 refereed articles on industrial relations, trade unions, labour markets, organizations, working time, social policy and welfare state development.