Towards Post-corporatist Concertation in Europe?

Social Partnership in Ireland and New Social Pacts

“…A second perspective veers to the opposite extreme by seeking to understand social partnership in terms of the displacement of deal making between the monopolistic organizations of labor and capital and the state, by fluid and changing networks linking organizations with overlapping constituencies, pursuing agreed solutions to common problems. What might be termed the “deliberative turn” in understanding social partnership has informed an influential perspective on Irish social pacts (O'Donnell and O’Riordan 2000; O'Donnell 2001a,b, 2003). This view has also informed discussions of social pacts in the Netherlands (Visser and Hemerjick 1997), in Denmark and in other European countries (see Marginson and Sisson 2004).…”

“…O'Donnell further notes that social partnership entails “problem solving,” with the capacity to shape and reshape the preferences of the social partners, interwoven with hardheaded bargaining of a more conventional nature (O'Donnell and O’Riordan 2000: 250). New relationships have emerged at multiple levels between public policy agencies and interest groups, as governments have sought to address complex problems requiring experimentation and “policy entrepreneurship.” As a result, state agencies have construed their role as facilitating deliberation among interest groups, promoting the diffusion of deliberative initiatives, and supporting interest group formation rather than in terms of providing “administrative direction,” entering distributional deals or underwriting the representational monopoly of union and employer associations (O'Donnell 2001a: 316–7). O'Donnell is clear that the Irish case should be viewed as paradigmatic, suggesting that it might assist the formulation of a new concept of “postcorporatist concertation” better able to portray arrangements emerging in several European countries (O'Donnell and O’Riordan 2000: 252).…”

Conceptualizing Cooperation

“…23 Whereas some representatives insisted that inter-firm networking was important, they usually emphasized lobbying when pressed to supply examples. Analysts, for example, often highlight the ease with which stakeholders were able to construct social partnership during the 1980s (Hardiman, 2002;O'Donnell, 2001). [There is] the American Chamber of Commerce, which has a very high political profile.…”

“…[There is] the American Chamber of Commerce, which has a very high political profile. 26 But the 1987 Program for National Recovery successfully broke from Ireland's conflictual and voluntarist tradition of industrial relations by forging a tripartite agreement to reduce government spending and moderate wage growth over a three-year period (O'Donnell, 2001). 25 Precisely because Ireland relied on concertation rather than coordination as in Germany, Irish scholars have generated very different theories about cooperation than their German counterparts.…”

Cross‐National Concepts in Supranational Governance: State–Society Relations and EU Policy Making

“…In the multilevel EU policy process, some analysts have discerned a sectoral "corporatist policy community" (Falkner 1998(Falkner , 187-188, 2003, an organizationally weaker and more market-conforming "competitive corporatism" (Rhodes 1998, 182-183), and a more deliberative "post-corporatist concertation" (O'Donnell 2001). As stipulated by the Maastricht Treaty, EU administrators formally negotiate social policies with European business and labor associations that possess de facto monopoly representation at the EU level.…”