Coordination as a Political Problem in Coordinated Market Economies

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the political dynamics of employer coordination in three well-known "coordinated market economies." We examine differences in how employer coordination has been organized in Sweden, Germany, and Japan

Institutional change in varieties of capitalism

“…But liberalization in Britain was associated with the decline of unions and employers associations, effectively dismantling some kinds of coordinating capacities. In Sweden, in contrast, liberalization involved a movement away from national-level wage coordination, accompanied by a cross-class realignment that brought much closer coordination between blue and white collar bargaining within the export sector, while leaving the public sector to bargain separately (Thelen and Kume, 2006). Not all changes grouped together under the rubric of 'liberalization' produce meaningful 'convergence' between coordinated and liberal market economies.…”

“…33 -36). The narrowing of collective bargaining coverage, the closure of internal labour markets especially in large companies, the trend towards more enterprise-oriented modes of in-plant training, and welfare state reforms that sharpen the divide between labour market insiders and outsiders represent important developments in the mode of coordination, even if they do not signal its collapse (Thelen and Kume, 2006).…”

Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementarities and Change in France and Germany

“…42 Contrary to accounts that mostly emphasize conflicts between labor and capital, some of the more destabilizing trends in German and French industrial relations, in fact, involved an intensification of cooperation between managers and workers in leading firms (in Germany's manufacturing sector and in France's large companies, both privatized companies and also those in the remaining state sector), which, however, complicated rather than reinforced coordination at higher levels. 43 Contra Rueda, this was not the work of Social Democrats protecting insiders; instead, it was the unanticipated working out of developments in collective bargaining, some of which had been designed to empower-not weaken-organized labor. However, in both Germany and France, we can see that the structures put in place in the 1970s and early 1980s to enhance labor's voice at the plant level ironically provided ideal vehicles for fueling trends toward dualism when economic hard times hit.…”

SASE Annual Meeting 2009, Paris, France: Economic regulation and social solidarity: conceptual and analytic innovations in the study of advanced capitalism

“…Achieving more conceptual and analytic degrees of freedom to make precise distinctions among types of coordination is important because many of the changes that are transpiring in the CMEs do not so much represent liberalization (in the sense of across-the-board deregulation), as they do some rather consequential shifts from one form of coordination to another (i.e. non-trivial movement within the broad category of CME) (Thelen and Kume, 2006; also Pontusson, 1997).…”

“…Thelen and Kume, 2006). Even if there are joint gains to be had through cooperation, employers do not typically unite spontaneously and their organizations are chronically prone to fall apart as a result of opportunism and guile.…”