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The Political Organisation of Business and Welfare State Restructuring: Howassociationalfactorsshapeemployers'cooperationforsocialpolicydevelopment

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The Political Organisation of Business and Welfare State Restructuring: Howassociationalfactorsshapeemployers'cooperationforsocialpolicydevelopment UNIVERSITÄT SALZBURG UNIVERSITÀ DI MILANO Kultur­ und Gesellschaftswissenschaftlichen Facoltà di Scienze Politiche Fakultät BI­NATIONALLY SUPERVISED DOCTORAL THESIS (CO­TUTELLE DE THÈSE) The Political Organisation of Business and Welfare State Restructuring: HowAssociationalFactorsShapeEmployers'CooperationforSocialPolicyDevelopment ClaudiaArisi Ph.D.ProgrammeinPoliticalScience Ph.D.ProgrammeinLabourStudies ofthe ofthe SalzburgCentreofEuropeanUnionStudies GraduateSchoolinSocialandPoliticalSciences (XXIVcycle­2008/2009;SPS/04,SPS/09) Supervisors: Professor Nikolaus Dimmel Supervisor: Professor Sonja Puntscher­Riekmann Professor Stefano Sacchi Salzburg 2012 Acknowledgements This thesis is the result of a long research project conducted under a joint doctoral supervision agreement (co-tutelle de thèse) between the University of Milan (Ph.D. in Labour Studies, Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences) and the University of Salzburg (Ph.D. in Political Science, Salzburg Centre of European Union Studies). It is then no exaggeration to say that it would have not been possible to complete this doctoral journey without the patient and insightful support of my two Ph.D. supervisors, Professors Nikolaus Dimmel and Stefano Sacchi, who I sincerely thank for their guidance throughout my thesis-writing period. I also wish to thank Professor Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann for giving me the opportunity to work at the SCEUS, which provided the necessary financial and technical assistance for doing my research. During my stay at the SCEUS I could meet many people that gave me fresh ideas and feedbacks for my work, or what I shortly call brain food. Among them, special thanks go to Michael Bruter, Andreas Dür, Reinhard Heinisch, Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, and Beate Kohler-Koch. I owe my thanks also to the Department of Labour and Welfare Studies in Milan, where I had the pleasure to spend part of my Ph.D. experience. There too I found many people that generously provided me with helpful assistance. I am especially grateful to Lorenzo Bordogna, Maurizio Ferrera, Ida Regalia and Marino Regini, who welcomed my request for acceptance as a cotutelle doctoral student and inspired my research interests. I would like to thank also Maria Antonietta Confalonieri (University of Pavia), the supervisor of my master thesis, who persuaded me to embark on a Doctoral Programme in the first place. Countless colleagues have helped me in various ways during the making of my dissertation. Although I cannot list them all, I would like to mention at least Christina Ortner, Alena Ottichova, Helene Schönheinz and Ilze Ruse, for continuous practical (and moral!) support throughout our common Ph.D. adventure; and Thomas Paster, for the kind advice and for sending me a preview of his first book manuscript that proved very useful for my work. My field research has benefitted from the collaboration of anonymous interviewees as well as Austrian and Italian national institutions (especially the AK, the Confindustria, the i ÖGB, and the WKÖ) that provided me with first-hand information and archive documents. I would like to thank them here too. Last, but by no means least, I wish to express my deeply-felt thanks to all those people that, with their warm encouragement, friendship and love, have rendered the writing of my thesis far from a lonely enterprise. Among them, I am tremendously indebted with my family, especially my mother, Rodolfo and Gabriele. For their affectionate and decisive aid, especially during the widely known dissertation dumps, I hereby honour them with the title of best undervisors ever. My very last thanks go to Darma, my cute dog, who recently passed away at the glorious age of 16. For her invaluable company, she has my eternal gratitude. ii Abstract Given that business interests have assumed ever-growing importance in welfare state restructuring, and that welfare programmes impose significant costs on firms, when and how can employers decide to actively support the development of contemporary social policy? This thesis shows that specific types of business interest organisation can favour the cooperation of employers for the establishment of new social welfare legislation by mediating between their heterogeneous economic interests and the political target structure, and by governing their collective political mobilisation. Drawing on theories of collective action and neo-corporatist models, the thesis elaborates an original typological framework and assesses it through an historical cross-national study of the role of organised business in the Austrian and Italian severance pay reforms (1990s-2000s). Detail process-tracing and systematic cross-case comparison are used to reconstruct and analyse what motivated and enabled the Austrian business community, but not the Italian one, to decisively promote the use of severance payments for the expansion of supplementary pension funds. Empirically, the thesis finds that differences in the institutional set-up of the national organisation of business interests have shaped divergent governance roles of business in the two countries by making for different organisational capacities of interest coordination and unification on the one hand, and of bargained interest accommodation, on the other. In particular, highly inclusive and cohesive organisational forms of interest representation, like the Austrian ones, have allowed employers’ representatives to contain intra-class interest conflicts and deliver unitary, politically manageable and moderate social policy demands. Moreover, rather stable participation in state regulation (in non- wage policy areas) and high sanction leverage vis-à-vis members have enabled organisational leaders to determine collective social policy goals and strategies quite independently from the short-term interests of employers, and to render organisational decisions binding also for members opposing resistance. In closing, the thesis provides evidence that, even in presence of appropriate institutional arrangements, a remarkable responsibility for building business support for social welfare initiatives rests on the government. Since the latter can bias the contingent conditions of political influence, it can dampen organisations’ cooperative efforts whenever it opts for clientelistic dynamics of policy formation instead of backing the construction of cross-class reform coalitions. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................i Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vii List of Main Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ viii I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 II. Business and the Welfare State ..................................................................................................... 6 1. Welfare state research and employers’ role in social policy development ................................. 6 1.1 The thesis of employers’ relentless hostility ........................................................................ 7 1.2 The thesis of employers’ occasional support ..................................................................... 13 2. The two theses and their reconciliation ................................................................................... 19 III. Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 22 1. Varieties of employers’ roles in social policy development .................................................... 22 2. The collective action of interest groups: logics, problems and structures ................................ 27 2.1 Classic theories of collective action ................................................................................... 27 2.2 Social class and organisability: Traxler’s critique of theories of collective action............. 32 2.3 Interests and organisational context: the political logic of collective action ...................... 35 2.4 Organisations as transforming agents of economic interests ............................................. 39 3. The organisation of business interests ..................................................................................... 42 3.1 The logic of membership: employers’ interests and organisability .................................... 44 3.2 The logic of influence: welfare states and employers’ political organisation .................... 48 4. Institutions, organisational processes and employers’ role in social policy development ........ 51 5. Summary: framework of analysis and research hypothesis ..................................................... 56 IV. Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 59 1. Theory-building research objective ........................................................................................
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