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The Political Economy of Adjustment in Mixed Market Economies: A Study of Spain and Italy

Óscar Molina and Martin Rhodes

in Beyond Varieties of Capitalism: Conflict, Contradictions, and Complementarities in the European Economy

VoC theory seems to be caught in a trade-off between parsimony and explanatory capacity. It provides high heuristic value-added for analysing countries where performance-enhancing complementarities ... More

VoC theory seems to be caught in a trade-off between parsimony and explanatory capacity. It provides high heuristic value-added for analysing countries where performance-enhancing complementarities rely on clearly different patterns of actor interaction and forms of coordination. It appears more difficult to extend to ‘deviant’ cases where there is a mix of logics, a high degree of institutional incoherence and an apparent absence of complementarities. This chapter uses the tools of VoC to explain how mechanisms of market and non-market coordination work and change over time in two ‘mixed market economies’ (MMEs) — Italy and Spain. It focuses on the relationship between production regimes and welfare systems, and specifically the wage-labour nexus and employment protection. In contrast to arguments for a distinctive form of state capitalism alongside ‘market’ and ‘managed’ varieties, this chapter argues that the state's role is distinctive but not unique in the Mediterranean countries, and has also undergone considerable change in recent years. It also argues that two different trends can be perceived in these countries: the growth of ‘autonomous coordination’ in which actors seek to manage the economy via new kinds of non-market governance; and ‘market colonization’, a process whereby market modes of coordination emerge and prevail.Less

Contested Areas of Sovereignty: Labor Migration and Asylum Policy in New Countries of Immigration: Ireland, Italy, and Poland

Georg Menz

in The Political Economy of Managed Migration: Nonstate Actors, Europeanization, and the Politics of Designing Migration Policies

This chapter explores the politics of migration in three recent countries of immigration. The analysis of employers, trade unions, and humanitarian NGOs in shaping national migration policies again ... More

This chapter explores the politics of migration in three recent countries of immigration. The analysis of employers, trade unions, and humanitarian NGOs in shaping national migration policies again is at the centre of analysis. Top-down Europeanization is particularly pivotal in new immigration countries with embryonic systems of migration regulation, while bottom-up attempts have been limited to Italian proposals for quota systems and their use to induce “cooperation” with third countries in migration flow management. But despite the recent history of immigration, employers, especially in Ireland and Italy, value managed migration of labor migrants, both high and low skill, feeding into the primary, tertiary, and, in the case of Italy, also the secondary sector to alleviate labor and in some instances skill shortages. In Poland, undocumented economic migration from neighboring Ukraine is tolerated, but thus far, there is scant interest in active labor market recruitment on the part of employers. The labor market interest associations are pivotal actors in Ireland and Italy, actively comanaging labor migration flows, while in Poland their influence is less pronounced. NGOs face severe difficulties in constructing access channels to government with the exception of Italy, where links to political parties and demonstrations have often led to more liberal regulatory outcomes.Less

The Scandinavian Party Model at the Crossroads

Jan Sundberg

in Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies

Scandinavian party systems have often been seen as ‘ultra stable’, a view that was certainly justified between 1945 and the early 1970; however, the general election of 1973 in Denmark signalled a ... More

Scandinavian party systems have often been seen as ‘ultra stable’, a view that was certainly justified between 1945 and the early 1970; however, the general election of 1973 in Denmark signalled a new era of instability as the three major parties saw their aggregate share of the vote slashed; soon similar developments became visible in Norway, to some extent in Finland, and (a little later) in Sweden. The main political actors in the Scandinavian democracies are organized around conflicts between labour and capital, and between the rural peripheries and urban centres; the five party families of the classic Scandinavian model (social democracy, conservatism, liberalism, agrarian ‘centrism’, and communism) are deeply anchored in these social bases, with class especially having been a more important determinant of party loyalty than in other west European democracies; in particular, the mutual tolerance and moderation that parties typically accord each other in consensus democracies has resulted in the creation of an extensive and well‐known mixed welfare economy. However, the classic five‐party model no longer provides a comprehensive account of party politics in Scandinavia: since the early 1970s a variety of other parties, old and new, have emerged, and this has led to doubt as to whether the Scandinavian party systems remain distinctive, although they may still be located in the category of moderate pluralism. The increasing fragmentation of parliaments has also affected governments in different ways in the four countries. The introduction discusses these changes; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine (the erosion of) party legitimacy, party organizational strength (finance, members), and the systemic functionality of political parties (in governance, political recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, and political communication).Less

Technocracy

Theodore Zeldin

in France 1848–1945: Volume Two: Intellect, Taste and Anxiety

The period 1914–45 was one of anxiety to those who lived through it not least because they did not know where it was leading. A great many people behaved, even after the war of 1914 and even during ... More

The period 1914–45 was one of anxiety to those who lived through it not least because they did not know where it was leading. A great many people behaved, even after the war of 1914 and even during the German occupation of 1940–4, as though nothing fundamental had changed. The battles of the politicians, the rise and fall of ministries, tell us about day-to-day preoccupations, but that is only one level of history. At another level, we can see three major changes occurring in these years which transcend the bitter quarrels, which were abetted by politicians of almost all parties, and which place the details of events in a different light. The capitalist system, first of all, received a fatal blow in 1914, at least in the form in which it had existed in the nineteenth century. Its death throes may be regarded as a central theme of the next thirty years. After that, the economy was run on radically different lines and the state, which hitherto had limited its interventions to a comparatively small segment of life, emerged vastly more active, and very much transformed. The rise of an expansionist France in the 1950s, based on a ‘mixed economy’ and welfare benefits, cannot be understood without going back to these years.Less

Negative and Positive Integration

Fritz Scharpf

in Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic?

This chapter examines ‘negative integration’ within the European Community and its unique effectiveness in dismantling the post-war controls of national governments over their own economic ... More

This chapter examines ‘negative integration’ within the European Community and its unique effectiveness in dismantling the post-war controls of national governments over their own economic boundaries. Through the ‘constitutionalisation’ of competition law, the European Commission and the European Court of Justice have greatly reduced the capacity of democratic politics at the national level to impose market-correcting regulations on increasingly mobile capital and on economic interactions. As a result, national polities find themselves under conditions of a ‘competition among regulatory systems’ that may prevent all of them from maintaining market-correcting policies that were previously supported by democratic majorities. At the same time, however, policies of ‘positive integration’, which would reconstruct a capacity for market-correcting regulations at the European level, continue to depend on near-unanimity among national governments in the Council of Ministers, and are thus easily blocked by conflicts of interests among these governments.Less

Epilogue: Sorting Out the Mixed Economy

Amy C. Offner

in Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas

This chapter focuses on the elements of the mixed economy, which has been sorted out by the conflicts of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and redefined them as features of different historical eras. As a ... More

This chapter focuses on the elements of the mixed economy, which has been sorted out by the conflicts of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and redefined them as features of different historical eras. As a result, remnants of the mixed economy are all around the globe, generally renamed and politically resignified. It describes how mid-century states came into being and how they came undone. It also dislodges neoliberalism as the only conceivable endpoint of twentieth-century political economy. This chapter presents features of mixed economies as antagonistic antecedents. Welfare and developmental states were profoundly contradictory formations that offered extraordinary resources to those who dreamed of social democracy. They generated manifold forms of decentralization, private delegation, deregulation, and austerity, nearly all of them forgotten because subsequent state makers appropriated those practices, put them to new ends, wrote them new genealogies, and branded them neoliberal.Less

Growth and Infrastructure

Dipankar Dasgupta

in Modern Growth Theory

Inadequate infrastructure is a serious constraint on the growth potential of developing economies. A growing economy can take advantage of any given infrastructure if the infrastructure can handle ... More

Inadequate infrastructure is a serious constraint on the growth potential of developing economies. A growing economy can take advantage of any given infrastructure if the infrastructure can handle the growing demand from firms. Infrastructure growth, therefore, is correlated with economic development. Accordingly, this chapter examines the connection between infrastructure and economic growth. It introduces infrastructure in two different forms, a flow (such a clean environment) and a stock (such as public highways). It also discusses the private economy, growth rate vs. welfare maximization in a private economy, command economy vs. private economy and mixed economy, public input and congestion, proportional tax in a private economy, and balanced growth equilibrium.Less

Afterword: Looking Ahead on Technology Trends, Industry Organization, and Government IT

Patrick Dunleavy, Helen Margetts, Simon Bastow, and Jane Tinkler

in Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State, and e-Government

This afterword looks at some of the most feasible ‘next-wave’ technology-driven changes, then at how the world market for government IT may change in the next two decades, and finally at alternative ... More

This afterword looks at some of the most feasible ‘next-wave’ technology-driven changes, then at how the world market for government IT may change in the next two decades, and finally at alternative scenarios of how governments may handle the development of their IT systems. The study period has coincided with a massive increase in interest in government IT, as the spread of central government e-government initiatives across the world took on some aspects of the earlier dot.com boom in e-commerce. A key theme for the coming decades in all seven case study countries will be identity management. In taxation, social security, and immigration, technological trends are requiring ever greater innovation in terms of reliable identification and authentication techniques. Five feasible technology-driven changes with particular relevance for government over the coming decades are identified: web-based utility computing for some agencies; a shared-services mixed economy; spread of zero trend technologies; semantic Web; and graphical interface to governmental services.Less

Introduction

Amy C. Offner

in Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas

This chapter provides a background of the journeys across the postwar Americas to uncover the mid-century world to which David Lilienthal belonged and the unseen possibilities that lay within it. It ... More

This chapter provides a background of the journeys across the postwar Americas to uncover the mid-century world to which David Lilienthal belonged and the unseen possibilities that lay within it. It starts from the idea that the fate of the US welfare state and Latin American developmental states cannot be understood in isolation from one another. Lilienthal belonged to a generation of North Americans who threw their energies into the Third World after 1945, and their work overseas did more than remake foreign lands; it shaped the possibilities of policy making at home. Within the Western Hemisphere, long exchanges between US and Latin American societies endowed their political economies with some of the same internal contradictions. When the crises of the 1970s and 1980s came, the divergent promises that they harbored became vividly apparent. The mobilization of the right and the explosive conflicts of those decades did not simply substitute one set of ideas for another, obliterating all that came before. Instead, they sorted out the elements of midcentury mixed economies, destroying some practices, redeploying others, and retrospectively redefining them all as emblems of two different eras.Less

Towards a whole-economy approach to the welfare state: citizens, corporations and the state within the broad welfare mix

Kevin Farnsworth

Elke Heins, Catherine Needham, and James Rees (eds)

in Social Policy Review 31: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2019

This chapter argues for a broadening of social policy focus, beyond the mixed economy approach (which incorporates social, private, informal/familial, voluntary, fiscal and occupational welfare) ... More

This chapter argues for a broadening of social policy focus, beyond the mixed economy approach (which incorporates social, private, informal/familial, voluntary, fiscal and occupational welfare) towards a whole economy approach that ‘brings in’ corporate welfare and a broader focus on taxation, public policies that overlap with social policy objectives, power and the economy. Less

Planning, Mixed Economy, and Jawaharlal Nehru

K. L. Datta

in Growth and Development Planning in India

This chapter discusses the circumstances which led the political leaders to adopt planning and use it as an instrument of policy in economic and social reconstruction in India after Independence. It ... More

This chapter discusses the circumstances which led the political leaders to adopt planning and use it as an instrument of policy in economic and social reconstruction in India after Independence. It elucidates how planning was initiated to modernize India’s resource-constrained, stagnant, and decaying economy, and dove-tailed with the mixed economy approach. It argues that the decision to use planning and the antecedent role to the state and the public sector was not taken by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru alone, as it also came from contemporary leaders. It dispels the notion that the planning model employed by the Soviet Union was straightjacketed in India. Appraising Nehru’s engagement with planners and policymakers, it refers to events that may have shaped his decision to rely on planning, in the context of India’s growth and development strategy that sought to increase income and improve the living standards of its people.Less

Grenada: Socioeconomic Overview, 1960–2012

Kari H. I. Grenade

in The Grenada Revolution: Reflections and Lessons

The chapter reviews economic policy and performance during the era of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG). It provides an overview of the economic environment during the Gairy era to help ... More

The chapter reviews economic policy and performance during the era of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG). It provides an overview of the economic environment during the Gairy era to help explain some of the possible causal antecedents (from an economic perspective) of the PRG’s insurrection in October, 1979, and why they would have pursued economic development differently from Gairy. It also discusses several aspects of development planning and policy as well as the performances of the four key economic sectors (real, fiscal, monetary and external) during 1979-83. A salient finding is that notwithstanding extensive social programs, the pursuit of a mixed economy model approach to development in an inherently and deeply-entrenched capitalist economic structure mitigated against the attainment of meaningful development results. The chapter ends with a discussion of some lessons evinced from the PRG’s experience that might be relevant for contemporary economic policy and management.Less

Policing and community safety in residential areas: the mixed economy of visible patrols

Crawford Adam

in Housing, urban governance and anti-social behaviour: Perspectives, policy and practice

This chapter tries to connect housing to an increasingly mixed economy of policing where the demand for security patrols in residential areas is delivered through different forms of neighbourhood ... More

This chapter tries to connect housing to an increasingly mixed economy of policing where the demand for security patrols in residential areas is delivered through different forms of neighbourhood wardens, police officers, and private security firms. It critiques the effectiveness of this mixed economy in improving the communities' fears of ASB and crime. It is argued that these developments actually symbolise an emerging form of community-based — but parochial — governance. The chapter also identifies the need to consider the coordination between ‘plural policing personnel’ and to make sure that there is enough accountability and regulation in this mixed economy.Less

Managerialism and the social work business

Steve Rogowski

in Social work: The rise and fall of a profession?

This chapter explores the growth of managerialism and the development of the ‘social-work business’ in Britain. Since the 1980s, more effective private-sector-type management has been presented as ... More

This chapter explores the growth of managerialism and the development of the ‘social-work business’ in Britain. Since the 1980s, more effective private-sector-type management has been presented as the panacea for almost every problem facing the public services, including social work. The introduction of managerialism and the social-work business have taken social work away from relationship-based activity, let alone anything more radical, critical, or even progressive. The rhetoric refers to ‘empowerment’, ‘choice’, and ‘needs-led assessment’, and there is an attempt to recreate the ‘client’ or ‘service user’ as a ‘consumer’/‘customer’, particularly as in the personalisation agenda. Significantly, we often see social-care organisations having to adapt to meet their targets rather than the real needs of the people they are supposed to serve. The chapter also discusses the emphasis on markets, the mixed economy, the expansion and intensification of regulation, consumerism as a major aspect of the social-work business, and privatisation and the voluntary sector.Less

‘Socialist Realism’: The Short Life of Left-Wing Economic Revisionism in the 1920s

Daniel Ritschel

in Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870: Essays in Honour of Jose Harris

Though it is often suggested that the Labour Party did not think seriously about socialist economic policy until after the debacle of 1931, there was in fact a remarkably sophisticated body of ... More

Though it is often suggested that the Labour Party did not think seriously about socialist economic policy until after the debacle of 1931, there was in fact a remarkably sophisticated body of innovative economic thought on the left of the Party late in the 1920s. Fashioned by prominent left-wing intellectuals, including G. D. H. Cole, H. N. Brailsford, and John Strachey, their ideas anticipated many of the policies that were to define Labour economics over the next two decades, including a proto-Keynesian reflationary strategy for expansion of the slumping post-war economy, centralized economic planning in a ‘mixed’ system of public and private enterprise, and even a detailed outline of the public corporation as a model for the management of socialized industries. Their contributions failed to make an impact in 1929–31 mainly because of the inflexible resistance to all socialist advice by the MacDonald–Snowden leadership, and then their own unfortunate association with Mosley’s ill-fated rebellion in 1930–1. However, their ideas would influence the new generation of Labour economists among the New Fabians of the 1930s.Less