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Power Resources and Employer-Centered Approaches in Explanations of Welfare States and Varieties of Capitalism: Protagonists, Consenters, and Antagonists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Abstract
The power resources approach, underlining the relevance of socioeconomic class and partisan politics in distributive conflict within capitalist economies, is challenged by employer-centered approaches claiming employers and cross-class alliances to have been crucial in advancing the development of welfare states and varieties of capitalism. Theoretically and empirically these claims are problematic. In welfare state expansion, employers have often been antagonists, under specific conditions consenters, but very rarely protagonists. Well-developed welfare states and coordinated market economies have emerged in countries with strong left parties in long-term cabinet participation or in countries with state corporatist institutional traditions and confessional parties in intensive competition with left parties.
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References
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50 In France employers instead stuck with the voluntary Ghent program, which up to the Second World War had only a minuscule coverage (2–3 percent) among employees. In Germany unemployment aid was means tested.
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64 Levels of industrial conflict show relatively much short-term variation, and in Sweden just before 1932, partly because of the onset of the Great Depression, they were relatively low. The discussion here, however, is based on the major differences in industrial conflicts before and after the Second World War.
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94 Left parties here include traditional social democratic parties and parties to their left, confessional parties the major ones associated with Catholicism and minor ones with Protestantism, while secular center-right parties include conservative, liberal and agrarian parties, and green parties and minor parties not otherwise classified. The 1945–90 period is likely to cover the maturation of production regimes.
95 Cabinet strength is indicated by the proportion of party representatives in each cabinet considering the duration of the cabinet. Longevity is measured as the longest period of continuous cabinet participation (with no more than two consecutive calendar years of cabinet absence) taken as a percentage of the years 1945–90.
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104 Estevez-Abe, Iversen, and Soskice (fn. 5), 151–53.
105 Since old-age pensions pose special problems with respect to financing and benefit levels, we focus here on the three programs for short-term absences from work. Data are from the Social Citizenship Indicator Program under construction at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University. For details, see the Methodological Appendix, in Korpi and Palme (fn. 32, 2003).
106 et replacement rates, at average wage levels of production workers, are calculated after taxes and transfers. To avoid benefit differences related to family supplements, we here focus on single persons. Maximum replacement rates are available only for gross wages and twenty-six weeks of duration.
107 In several countries, work accident and sickness insurance have become coordinated, decreasing differences between them.
108 Korpi and Palme (fn. 32,1998); Korpi (fn. 87).
109 For example, in Sweden during recent decades some conflicts among sectors have been visible in debates related to nuclear energy and Sweden's joining the European Union and the European Monetary Union, debates where unions in export-oriented industries have joined employers in publicly supporting nuclear energy and joining.
110 On the level of firms, however, the existence of efficiency wages indicates that employers can use wage differentiation as a managerial device.
111 Iversen and Soskice show a marked positive bivariate correlation among twenty countries between the proportion of the population in vocational training and relative size of government transfers; , Iversen and , Soskice, “An Asset Theory of Social Policy Preferences,” American Political Science Review 95 (December 2001)Google Scholar. This correlation is, however, likely to be the result of efforts by left and confessional cabinets to expand welfare states as well as to provide occupational training for youth not continuing in tertiary education.
112 Major socioeconomic differences in unemployment rates are exemplified by the finding that in Sweden in 1990, the level of unemployment among unskilled workers was more than four times higher than among higher salaried employees and twice as high as among medium and lower salaried employees; Korpi, Walter, Arbetslöshet och arbetslöshetsförsakring i Sverige (Unemployment and unemployment insurance in Sweden) (Stockholm: Department of Labor, 1995)Google Scholar. As one piece of evidence for skill specificity driving individual demand for social protection, Iversen and Soskice (fn. Ill) use responses to the question “how difficult would it be for you to find an acceptable job,” remarking that “all else equal,” answers to this question are likely to reflect that skill specificity is associated with higher unemployment (p. 882). But in this context, for example, national and regional differences in levels of unemployment are also likely to affect responses.
113 Hall and Soskice (fn. 5), 13.
114 Thus, for example, in the basic program of unemployment insurance, during the period 1947–85 replacement rates in Italy decreased to single-digit levels; OECD, The Jobs Study, pt. 2 (Paris: OECD, 1994)Google Scholar, chap. 8.
115 In Britain, as noted above, the Labor Party failed in successive attempts to introduce earning relatedness in flat-rate programs.
116 In this context, see also Pontusson (fn. 102).
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