for helpful comments and criticism, i wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers and alexandre afonso, James Cronin, elke heins, alexander hicks, martin höpner, achim Kemmerling, daniel Kinderman, mathieu leimgruber, aldo madariaga, philip manow, isabela mares, paul marx, Julia moses, herbert obinger, Georg picot, sven steinmo, and tobias ten Brink. b u s I n es s a n d w el fa r e s tat e d ev el o p m en t 417 4 hacker and pierson 2002; Korpi 2006.
Existing studies on employers' preferences towards institutions of class cooperation suggest that certain types of employers support these institutions because they provide economic benefits. To test this thesis, this paper examines attitudes of German employers towards board-level codetermination. It compares firms' attitudes at the individual and the collective level: individual firms' attitudes are analysed using survey data and media statements from individual executives; collective attitudes are analysed using policy statements from the national business federations. The paper finds considerable support for board-level codetermination among individual firms but continued opposition from the federations. The paper suggests that this difference arises from the federations strategically over-representing dissatisfied members. The promotion of voluntary arrangements allows the federations to campaign against board-level codetermination without alienating the satisfied members. The paper highlights the need to complement a micro-foundational analysis of preference formation with an analysis of intra-associational processes of preference aggregation.
Employee coverage by multi-employer bargaining declined since the 1980s in many countries, but countries differ in the extent of that decline. These differences are due, in part, to statutory coverage extension. We analyse the use of statutory coverage extension in two countries, Germany and the Netherlands. Agreements are extended frequently in the Netherlands, where coverage remained stable as a result, but sparingly in Germany, where coverage eroded. The article shows that different employer attitudes are the main cause of this difference. These differences in employer attitudes result from (a) different perceptions of the effects of wage competition by non-organized firms on organized firms and (b) differences in employer views on the appropriateness of state compulsion.
In recent decades, business interests became protagonists of welfare retrenchment in many countries. In contrast, Austria’s national business organization, the WKÖ (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich), defended welfare programs and social partnership against government initiatives to dismantle them. Drawing on interviews and media reports, this article analyzes the reasons for this deviation, focusing on reforms in two fields: (a) public pensions and (b) social insurance administration. The article suggests that the institutional setup of interest representation in Austria explains this stance better than alternative explanations that focus on competitive advantages. The article identifies compulsory membership, equal voting rights, and encompassing organization as the relevant features of the institutional setup. These features shaped the WKÖ’s social policy attitudes in two ways: first, by ensuring a strong role for small firms, and second, by reducing the vulnerability of the organization to discontented minorities. The findings point to the importance of organizational structures in shaping associational policy preferences
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