Social Pacts in Europe: Emergence, Evolution, and Institutionalization

The result of a four-year long comparative research study centered at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and financed by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme, Social Pacts in Europe presents the first full-length theoretical and comparative empirical study of new social pacts in Europe. Its aim is to bring the level of sophistication achieved in an earlier literature on neo-corporatism to the more contemporary phenomenon of 'social pacting'. The book brings a wide range of complementary theories to bear on the emergence, evolution and institutionalization of pacts, compares systematically a wide range of cases across Europe, and provides in-depth studies of Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia.

Social Pacts in Europe contributes to the scholarly debate on economic adjustment and institutional change in European capitalism by focusing on three inter-related questions: (i) what explains national variation in reliance on social pacts; (ii) what determines the outcomes of individual pact negotiations; and (iii) under what conditions are pacts repeated and become regular features of socio-economic governance? The book's theoretical innovations include a novel application of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) to help explain national differences in social pact adoption; the application of a game theoretic approach to explain social pact emergence; and a reinterpretation of traditional neo-corporatist and new institutionalist theory to help understand social pact consolidation and institutionalization.

Sabina Avdagic is Research Council UK Academic Fellow in the Department of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include comparative labor relations and processes of institutional change in democratic capitalism, and her current research focuses on the causes and effects of national variation in the strictness of employment protection legislation in Europe.

Martin Rhodes is Professor of Comparative Political Economy and PhD Program Co-Director at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies in University of Denver. Until 2006 he was Professor of Public Policy, Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute (EUI), Florence, and Research Director of the NEWGOV Research Consortium, EUI (2004-2005).

Jelle Visser is Professor of Empirical Sociology and Chair of Sociology of Labor and Organization at the University of Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2010 he directed the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS), and he held teaching and research positions and fellowships at the European University Institute, University of Mannheim, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stanford University, and Oxford University, and worked as consultant to the Organisztion of Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Commission and the International Labour Organization. He is the (co-) author of numerous books and some 100 refereed articles on industrial relations, trade unions, labor markets, organizations, working time, social policy, and welfare state development.