The comparative political economy literature has been inconclusive in its assessment of the extent of welfare state retrenchment. One strand of research emphasised that welfare states have not undergone outright retrenchment, but recalibration. Another strand argued that there is a shift towards the privatization of risks and increased reliance on the market. While these assessments likely represent differences in magnitude, our paper seeks to contribute to these debates with an alternative argument: collectivization of social risks. We employ a method of contextualized comparisons, examining three cases of collectivization across diverse contexts: the financing of disability insurance in the Netherlands, training provision for employed and unemployed in Greece, and regulation of atypical contracts in Italy. The paper concludes by discussing the political dynamic that ensued and the wider relevance of the argument to debates in comparative political economy and comparative industrial relations. 2

Do climate-oriented regulatory policies affect the flow of credit towards polluting corporations? We match loan-level data to firm-level greenhouse gas emissions to assess the impact of the Paris Agreement. We find that, following this agreement, European banks reallocated credit away from polluting firms. In the aftermath of President Trump's 2017 announcement that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, lending by European banks to polluting firms in the United States decreased even further in relative terms. It follows that green regulatory initiatives in banking can have a significant impact combating climate change.

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The recent financial crisis has once again highlighted the precarious situation of trade unions: austerity measures have targeted unions' traditional institutional ally, the welfare state, as well as their last organizational stronghold, the public sector. The purpose of this article is to examine how trade unions have responded to reductions in welfare provision, due either to reform or to state inaction, and how state retrenchment can provide a silver lining for unions via the enhancement of unions' bargaining responsibilities. We argue that, apart from retrenchment and privatization, there is a third road to welfare reform which involves unions' 'collectivization' of social risks through the take-up of marginalized policies in bargaining agreements. Presenting evidence from a most-likely (the Netherlands) and least-likely (Greece) case, we identify instances where unions have acted as pivotal political substitutes to the state in the realm of welfare provision. Ré suméLa récente crise financière a une fois de plus mis en évidence la situation précaire des syndicats. Des mesures d'austérité ont visé d'une part l'allié institutionnel et traditionnel des syndicats, à 1 This paper is a spin-off from joint work that the authors conducted during their involvement in the Reconciling Work and Welfare (RECWOWE) network of excellence. We wish to thank Christa van Wijnbergen, Anke Hassel, Richard Hyman and, in particular, Waltraud Schelkle for comments on other manuscripts on the topic. savoir l'Etat-providence et, d'autre part, leur dernier bastion syndical: le secteur public. L'objectif de cet article est d'examiner comment les syndicats ont répondu aux réductions de prestations sociales, dues soit aux réformes, soit à l'inaction de l'État, et comment les réductions des dépenses de l'État peuvent avoir un cô té positif pour les syndicats via l'élargissement des responsabilités de négociation des syndicats. Nous soutenons qu'en dehors des coupes sombres et de la privatisation, il existe une troisième voie à la réforme sociale qui implique la «collectivisation» syndicale des risques sociaux grâce à l'adoption de politiques marginalisées dans les conventions collectives. En pré-sentant un cas de figure le plus probable (Pays-Bas) et le moins probable (Grèce), nous identifions les cas où les syndicats ont fonctionné comme substituts politiques décisifs de l'Etat dans le domaine de la protection sociale. Zusammenfassung Die jüngste Finanzkrise hat erneut gezeigt, in welch prekärer Lage sich die Gewerkschaften befinden. Die Sparmaßnahmen nahmen den Wohlfahrtsstaat -einen traditionellen institutionellen Verbündeten der Gewerkschaften -und den ö ffentlichen Dienst ins Visier, der ihre letzte Hochburg darstellt. In diesem Beitrag wird untersucht, wie die Gewerkschaften auf die Beschneidung der Sozialleistungen, sei es infolge von Reformen oder der Untätigkeit des Staates, reagiert haben. Der Rückzug des Staates könnte insofern eine positive Perspektive für die Gewerkschaften eröffnen, als er eine Stärkung ihrer Verhandlungsbefu...