Current theories of unions are mainly theories of what unions were and did rather than theories of what unions will be and will do. Thus, the purpose of this book is to help make economic thinking about unions in Europe more forward‐looking and to discuss the role that unions are likely to play in the changed economic environment of the new century. The volume consists of two reports that are the results of coordinated efforts by some of the most authoritative scholars in the field. The first study addresses a number of issues related to the question of how the primary role of trade unions—collective bargaining over wages and work conditions—is likely to evolve in the early decades of the new millennium. Starting from the widespread impression of a trend toward weakening union power, the main aspects considered by the analysis are membership, wage effects, organization and presence of unions, bargaining structure, macroeconomic performance, future scenarios, and strategies. The second study investigates the interactions between trade unions, welfare systems, and welfare reforms. The overall theme is the policy dilemma created by the many different activities of trade unions in the field of welfare provision, notably pension policies and unemployment protection. Throughout the analysis, a tension emerges between the role of unions as voice of atomistic agents and insurance providers—that may contribute to increasing aggregate welfare by remedying market failures—and as rent‐seeking monopolist, underlying the intergenerational conflicts present within unions. The studies point to measures and strategies enhancing this second efficient role of the unions that draws mainly on their capacity to internalize to the employer–employee relationships costs that would otherwise fall on society at large.

Processes of socio-economic change − individualising society and globalising economics and politics − cause large problems for modern welfare states. Welfare states, organised on the level of nation-states and built on one or the other form of national solidarity, are increasingly confronted with − for instance − fiscal problems, difficulties to control costs, and the unintended use of welfare programs. Such problems -generally speaking -raise the issue of sustainability because they tend to undermine the legitimacy of the programs of the welfare state and in the end induce the necessity of change, be it the complete abolishment of programs, retrenchment of programs, or attempts to preserve programs by modernising them.This series of studies on welfare states focuses on the changing institutions and programs of modern welfare states. These changes are the product of external pressures on welfare states, for example because of the economic and political consequences of globalisation or individualisation, or result from the internal, political or institutional dynamics of welfare arrangements.By studying the development of welfare state arrangements in different countries, in different institutional contexts, or by comparing developments between countries or different types of welfare states, this series hopes to enlarge the body of knowledge on the functioning and development of welfare states and their programs.

This study analyzes national processes of pension reform in countries with systems of old-age provision largely following the Bismarckian type