How are coordinated market economies coordinated? evidence from Sweden

Abstract

Central actors in coordinated economies have a dense network of associations for coordinating their actions. However, we lack knowledge of how such relationships are constituted and how the mechanisms of such coordination work. In the present article, we concentrate on the non-market mechanisms of power and trust. We want to know: Are all actors in the industrial relations system connected to each other or are they divided into contending but coherent groups? And in that case, do certain actors playing the role of 'brokers' connect these groups? A social network analysis on survey data from Sweden shows that the state and the peak-organisations still hold powerful positions. Simultaneously, when concentrating on reciprocal ties, the organisational borders are in particular bridged over by public sector organisations. However, actors with power are not highly trusted. Instead, other state actors -especially the Labour Court -play an important role as a broker that all parties trust.

Joining the dots: the role of brokers in nutrition policy in Australia

“…However, the current role of the Broker 1 in nutrition policy may be more in line with the policy broker definition provided by the Advocacy Coalition Framework [14] where brokers are seen as actors that seek stability through connecting interest groups that differ in their beliefs. In these situations, policy brokers can intervene by promoting conciliatory policy solutions and by mediating trust [40]. …”

Does Power Drive Out Trust? Relations between Labour Market Actors in Sweden

“…For full hearings the court normally consists of seven members: a chairperson and vice‐chairperson, both of whom must be professional judges, a third impartial member who must be an expert in labour matters and four representatives of the trade union and employers' bodies (two from the unions and two from the employers' associations). Hence, there is a well‐elaborated institution for conflict resolution in Sweden, where the peak organisations and the Labour Court are very important parts of the system (Svensson and Öberg, 2005). Hence, this particular institutional setting may very well mitigate the presumed conflict between power and trust.…”

“…As already stated, complex relations in networks – and not only simple relations between pairs of actors – have to be considered in studies of power (Coleman, 1994, p. 43; Knoke, 1990; Scott, 2001, pp. 16–25; Svensson and Öberg, 2005). However, given the proposed mechanism in this study, we have to measure the perceived relative power within every dyad of actors 4 .…”

“…The reverse of this two-step method is that it entails a non-interpretable total R 2(Dekker et al, 2003;Dekker et al, 2005;Ŝaŝovova, 2006). 4 Hence, we do not use network centrality measures like indegree or betweenness here (compareSvensson and Öberg, 2005), since A's trust in B should correspond to A's perception of B's power (and not to the complete network's perception of B's power. However, given the questionnaire design, each respondent has to estimate the power 'within your sphere of activities' for every other actor in a given network.…”

Participatory Governance in the EU

“…Respondents were namely asked to rate, on a scale from 1 to 7, how much contact they had with various organisations and institutions when the REACH proposal was being prepared. As Torsten Svensson andPerOla Öberg (2005: 1077) point out, the frequency of contacts may be interpreted as the activation of power resources; in other words, the reason why some actors have denser contact networks than others is that they control important power resources, such as information or technical expertise. This measure of influence is thus closely connected to the power-resources approach.…”