When do Governments Share Their Power with Organised Interests? Economic and Political Determinants of Social Concertation in Europe

When do governments decide to share decision-making powers with trade unions and employers in socio-economic policies, and when do they decide to make policies unilaterally? In recent years, the fate of what was called neo-corporatist policymaking, the practice by which governments decide to share decision-making powers with trade unions and employers, has been the subject of divergent assessments. While some authors argued that there had been a revival of social concertation in Europe, notably through the practice of social pacts, others have argued that trade unions and employers have become nothing more than pressure groups whose power hardly limits the decision-making capacity of governments. However, we do not have a clear picture of the determinants of such practices. This paper provides a first attempt to assess the party-political and economic determinants of policy concertation in Europe, assessing the role of party ideology, the number of parties in government and legislature control on the likelihood of governments to involve social partners in policymaking. We show that weaker governments are more likely to involve social partners in policymaking, and that centrist governments are more likely to include them than left- or right-wing ones.