Tassinari, Arianna (2019) With or without you? Concertation, unilateralism and political exchange during the Great Recession. A comparative analysis of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the trajectory and causes of change in the dynamics of interest intermediation between governments, trade unions and employers’ organisations in European crisis-struck countries during the decade of the Great Recession (2008- 2018). It does so through a comparative analysis of crisis-responsive policy-making processes in four Eurozone peripheral countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. The analysis employs theory-building process tracing and draws upon 94 original semistructured elite and expert interviews. It adds to extant knowledge on social concertation and on the role of organised producer groups in the political sphere in three main ways. First, by proposing an original typology of interest intermediation which distinguishes between its institutional form and its substantive content, this thesis rebuffs accounts emphasising convergence towards unilateralism as the dominant mode of policy-making under crisis conditions. Conversely, it uncovers previously overlooked cross- and within-country variation in the interactions between governments and organised producer groups during the Great Recession. Although unilateralism became more commonplace, it finds that both during the acute crisis phase (2009-2013) and in the post-crisis period (2014-2018) political exchange practices have remained selectively resilient as modes of policy-making for both problem-solving and legitimation purposes. Second, the thesis contributes to theorising the logic of political exchange ‘in hard times’. It shows that where it has survived, tripartite concertation during the crisis has embodied a logic of ‘austerity corporatism’ aimed at facilitating or locking in retrenchment and liberalisation – thus marking a disjuncture between unions’ involvement in policy-making and their actual influence on policy outcomes. Unions’ participation in macro-concessionary bargaining is found to have been motivated primarily by a pursuit of their power-organisational interests, following a logic of influence. Third, the thesis contributes to theory development by putting forward an actorcentred institutionalist account of interest intermediation to explain the oscillation between unilateral and negotiated crisis-responsive adjustment. It argues that both unilateralism and concertation are the result of the strategic, agential decisions of governments and organised producer groups about whether or not to engage in political exchange to pursue either their policy/problem-solving interests or their power/legitimation interests, both vis-à-vis domestic electorates and external stakeholders, market actors and creditors. The analysis reconstructs the motivations that the three actors have to engage or not in political exchange in crisis circumstances. The cross-case comparison shows that dynamics of interest intermediation are influenced but not determined by contextual macro-economic and institutional factors. Rather, actors’ contingent choices about whether or not to engage in political exchange are found to be crucially shaped by their relative balance of power and by the composition of the power resources they have available, and by their perceptions of prior legacies of concertation. Overall, the thesis offers a theorisation of political exchange as an essentially unstable and endogenous phenomenon, which defies both functionalist and institutionalist, path-dependency focused explanations predicting either its inevitable demise or its immutable resilience.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2009, Italy -- Economic conditions -- 2008-, Spain -- Economic conditions -- 2008-, Ireland -- Economic conditions -- 2008-, Unilateral acts (International law)
Official Date:	August 2019
Dates:	Date Event August 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Donaghey, Jimmy ; Galetto, Manuela
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain)
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	388 leaves : illustrations (some colour)
Language:	eng

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