Dual vocational education and training (VET) with social partner involvement in its governance can typically be found in collective skill formation systems. This article reviews the diversity of collective skill formation systems with a particular focus on their systemic governance. In particular, we look at the actors involved as well as how the systemic governance is organised in terms of corporatist decision-making bodies. The article shows that there are important cross-national differences. First, the social partners do not always participate in the decision-making at the political-strategic level. Second, social partner involvement is not always on equal terms (parity), with trade unions in some cases being less strongly involved. Third, differences in VET governance are particularly pronounced at the technical-operational level. Empirically, the article focuses on the five prototypical collective skill formation systems Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Collective skill formation systems have come under sustained pressure in recent years. Scholars observe a fragmentation process, which is the result of changing power relations, putting large training firms in a dominant position. However, so far the literature has examined neither the role of small firms and intermediary associations nor the source of power of the various business actors. In this case study, we ask: If business is pivotal, but divided, who prevails and why? We find that the availability of credible exit options and the ability to act collectively determines the degree of influence of the various business actors.

This article analyses the role of partisan politics in the recent expansion of early childhood education and care in the German Länder. In contrast to recent work in comparative public policy that often diagnoses a waning of partisan effects, we find broad support for the notion that partisan differences continue to matter in this policy field. The government participation of left-wing parties is positively and significantly associated with changes in public spending on early childhood education, independent of whether this is measured as a percentage of gross domestic product or in terms of per-capita spending. In contrast, left-wing partisanship is not associated with changes in the share of public spending devoted to independent (private) institutions. Coalition status, particularly governing in a Grand Coalition, somewhat mediates these effects. Our empirical analysis is based on the findings from a cross-sectional time-series analysis based on an original data set of spending data for the 16 Länder for the time period between 1992 and 2010.

Historical institutionalist research has long struggled to come to terms with agency. Yet injecting agency into historical-institutionalist accounts is no easy task. If institutions are structuring agents’ actions, while they are simultaneously being structured by these very agents’ behavior, the ontological status of institutions remains unclear. Hence, most historical-institutional accounts, at the conceptual level, tend to downplay the role of agency. However, in this way, they also remain incomplete. Following the “coalitional turn” in historical institutionalism, we develop a new account of institutional change and stability that awards a central role to agency. At the heart of our approach is the notion that both stability and change in institutions presuppose constant coalition building by organized entrepreneurial actors. However, for several reasons, such coalition building is complicated, which ultimately leads to institutional stability. In addition, we argue that relevant state agencies actively shape whether the incumbent coalition or the challenger coalition prevails. We illustrate the potential of our actor-centered approach to institutional change by analyzing the reform of commercial training in Switzerland, tracing developments from the beginning of the 1980s until today.

The knowledge economy challenges the premises of collective skill formation systems. The jobs apprenticeships have traditionally prepared for—mid-level jobs in the industrial sector—disappear. Higher and more general skills become increasingly important, reinforcing cooperation dilemmas. The question arises of how these systems react to this pressure. In this chapter, employer reactions to situations in which the state replaces firms in the provision of skills are analysed. It is argued that, while initially not intended, the expansion of statist training in the face of structural challenges reinforces the decline of the number of training firms because it frees firms from constraints, offering an attractive exit opportunity from employer coordination. These trajectories are analysed by looking at two developments in the Austrian skill formation system at the higher and the lower end of the skills distribution: the expansion of VET to the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the introduction of public training workshops. Both sectors can be expected to expand as the growth of the knowledge economy progresses because trends towards higher skill needs not only leads to a growth of educational options at the higher end of the skill distribution but also necessitates the integration of those unable to cope with increasing skill demands (the lower end). In both cases, employers have increasingly warmed to statist VET because it allows them to save costs while the provision of a well-trained workforce is still ensured. This resulted in a further decline in collective training.